Breaking News
by WriteOnTime
Summary: Two network news anchors. One desk. In a race to get the story, love might become the headline - if they don't kill each other first. AU/AH Canon Couples, smart people, particle physics, and tap dancing.
1. Sitting in a Dead Man's Chair

Disclaimer: Twilight characters and situations are copyright Stephenie Meyer. This plot is mine, and you may not hijack or copy it without my permission.

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Sitting in a Dead Man's Chair

Thursday, 5:49 PM

"Where the fuck have you been?" Walter's eyes were watery and furious, his melon of a head shiny with the patina of nerves and authority. "Get your ass into makeup. No - wait - Charlene!" he screamed for the girl, who came flying across the studio with a pink tackle box in one hand and a sponge in the other. "Do her standing so Steve can mic her. Steve, get a mic on her five minutes ago. Jesus fucking Christ, this is New York, not Omaha or wherever the hell you're from. I shouldn't have to put up with this shit. What the hell about 'live network feed' do you not understand? It's my nuts in a sling if that chair is empty, you get me?"

Under normal circumstances, and were it directed at another person, the tirade might have rattled even the most seasoned pro and possibly cost the floor director his job. But I wasn't listening anyway, so Walter's magnificent spew was wasted on me. My thoughts were elsewhere, out of the building which housed the studio and precisely 42 blocks south and three avenues over.

Charlene, whose real name was actually Charlotte, tucked tissues into the collar of my blouse before applying Studio Fix to my face. "This is a big deal, Bella - you should pretend to give a shit, you know," she whispered.

I shrugged. "I'm not here to make his life easier. Are you finished?"

Charlotte surveyed my face as she finished sponging my forehead. "You'll do. Better sit down and let them test that blouse - what the hell made you wear it?"

I looked down at myself. "Crap. Oh, well. It's supposed to be a lucky color, right?"

"Won't be much luck involved if you look like a floating head against the green screen," Charlotte grinned, grabbing the tissues away from my neckline.

"I _am_ a floating head tonight," I muttered.

"You. In the chair," Walter whispered, but it was the kind of whisper that's really just a scream with the volume knob twisted to the left. I ambled onto the set and my ass met the chair he was so concerned about, but my eyes were still focused on the pages I was holding in my left hand. Someone bent over me, straightening the collar of my blouse and dragging the coil of my earpiece discreetly under my hair.

"Five minutes," a voice in my ear announced. Ben, our director, affectionately nicknamed "OVOR", or "Official Voice Of Reason". "Bella, we're blowing out the lead on the weapons bill and going with the Secretary's address to the U.N. instead. Are you good?" I nodded my head. "Okay - just give the guys in control a level check, because they can't read nods."

Looking up, I grinned at the booth with the tinted glass. "I'm a happy hungry hippo," I said randomly. "Walter's got anal warts and a suspicious rash where no suspicious rash should ever be. Call his wife and tell her to start the antibiotics." There. Lots of sibilants to make sure the levels were right and clean.

The sound engineer's voice drifted into my ear with an appreciative laugh. "Gotcha," he said.

The prompter built into the set desk shimmered to life with white-on-black text. Moving my sheaf of papers to one side, I tapped them to straighten them into a neatish pile. "Hey, Ben? So we're going with Secretary's address, weapons bill, unemployment in the heartland, Hague protest, break, right?"

"Right. I'm going to slot in the piece about cleanup from the hurricane in the Gulf following the break, and then we've got a report from the CDC about swine flu and Mexican border states."

"Who's responsible for the input on the prompter? They misspelled the Iranian president's name twice, which doesn't seem like an accident. How difficult is it to spell Ahmadinejad?"

"Gee, I don't know, Bella - probably less difficult than it is to say it," Ben answered me with calm sarcasm. "Quit clowning around. We're on in two."

This wasn't my first time in the anchor chair. I sat in most weekends, and had for the past year, also filling in during holidays when the professional talking head was taking a break from his exhausting job being somber and elder-statesmany. This night was different, though. The sudden death the previous morning of Dan Reynolds, the trusted face behind the network's nightly national news program, threw everything into chaos. The network executives were scrambling to find a replacement, but in the meantime, my presence in the New York bureau and my previous experience in the chair made me sort of a natural choice to pinch-hit until Dan's replacement could be found.

It's not as though I didn't realize what a great opportunity it was to be the face of the network's nightly news. The broadcast had huge numbers and blew the two competing networks' news programs out of the water. At that moment, I was sitting in what was arguably the most important chair in the news business of the entire planet, because the broadcast would be repackaged and fed to networks across the globe as the official "word from America".

None of that was lost on me, but it didn't shake me, either, because it wasn't as though I would permanently occupy this chair in the foreseeable future. I didn't want to be The Empty Face, and was honest enough about my looks to know that the network would never seriously consider me for the position in the first place. Too young. No gravitas. Female. Little brown thing, neither blonde enough nor elite enough to do the job the way they probably wanted to see it done. It didn't matter, anyway. I cared about finding the news, and that was pretty much ALL I cared about.

"Thirty seconds to air," Ben's voice told me. Walter stalked among the camera ops as they adjusted the pneumatic pedestals for the three set cameras, hopping over the triax cables like a portly Michael Flatley. The studio lights beat down on my head, heating up the air to Saharan levels.

"Live in five, four, three, cue open." The urgent beat of the network news theme song played out in the studio, and Walter pointed his Jimmy Dean breakfast link of a finger at me. Camera Two was hot, the red light at the top blinking a warning that anything and everything I was about to do would be a two-second delay from airing in living rooms, offices, airports, bars, and hospitals all across the nation.

"Good evening from New York, I'm Isabella Swan," I said to the light on Camera Two. "U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addressed the Assembly this afternoon with increasing concerns over the validity of the results from the recent elections in Iran."

I followed the script on the prompt, having by then mastered the trick of scanning three sentences in the blink of an eye and repeating them back to the camera without making the act obvious in any way. I had written none of the words I was reading, and that made me angry. No real part of me was engaged in this transfer of information. I considered the prompt screen as I waited for the U.N. piece to finish and the camera to return to my face. In my own way, I was just watching the news that night, too.

And I hated it.

The rest of the broadcast was uneventful, and Walter released me from the chair shortly after I signed off at seven. "You're such a cocky little rookie, aren't you," Walter couldn't help muttering as I wandered by. I tilted my head in his direction, trying to make up my mind whether or not it was worth the effort to pay him back with his own coin, but after a minute I just shrugged my shoulders again and walked on.

"He's so bald," Charlotte smiled. The statement was half-insult, half-explanation. I grinned at her and left the studio, anxious to get back to my home - my family, my fortress, my comfort and my obsession - the newsroom on the fourteenth floor.

"Hey, meat," yelled Tyler as I stepped off the elevator. "You almost looked like a girl tonight. You know, kinda doable. Half of us are beginning to change our minds about you."

"Oh, I hope it's the right half," I answered. "Pretty much whichever half you're not in would be the right half, you donkey."

"Jesus, was that a Gordon Ramsay comeback? At least now I know what you're doing with the three hours a day you're not here. You TiVo Paula Dean, too?"

"I'd insult you in your native tongue, but I don't speak imbecile."

"Keep talking about my tongue, Swan - you know you want it."

"Mmmm, fried, with a side of onions," I finished, and we both grinned. The eight full-time staffers in the newsroom were my adoptive brothers, and as much as I loathed the locker-room mentality they shared, they had taught me a lot about pulling information from hidden corners. It was not an easy place in which to make a home and a name for yourself, but after an extended and really quite ruthless hazing period, the boys had accepted me as one of their own and raised me the way that a mother cat might raise an orphaned rabbit. I was different, but still somehow family.

Newton had his feet slung over my chair; he was eating a bag of kasugai nuts and playing "presidential nicknames" with Eric. "Firecrotch," he challenged.

"Jefferson," Eric scoffed. "Come on, make me sweat a little."

"Hello and fuck off," I said as I neared my desk. "If you need a hassock, use Paul's head." Mike reluctantly removed his feet from my chair and I collapsed into it, dumping my well-worn messenger bag on the floor next to me. "What's the news, gentlemen?"

Tyler sat on the edge of my desk and grabbed the bag of nuts from Mike's hands. "We think something might be going down with the ATF and the Michigan militia. Sam's contact at the bureau was eager to talk this morning, but he's been locked down solid since around two o'clock. Have anyone you can work over there?"

"Sure. Want me to shoot and write the story for you, too, so you can sign your name to it and take the rest of the night off?"

"Don't be that way, baby. Just pour some of your sugar down the wire and see if anyone wants you bad enough to give us a lead."

I sighed. "Fine, I'll make a call - but then I need you all to scram." As I said the words, I knew they were a mistake, and braced myself for what came next.

"Oh, busy, are we, Swan? I know it can't be personal, because you don't do personal, so that means you're working on something. Share." Tyler, Mike, and Eric stood around me in a testosterone triangle, but I was unimpressed.

"Not a chance," I smiled. "You call me meat, you don't get to tag along. Besides, it might be nothing. It's probably nothing."

But the guys knew better than that, because my "nothing" usually turned out to bump lead stories at the last minute.

Tyler decided to take a different tack with me, kneeling in front of my chair and pouting. "Aww, come on, gorgeous. You know we can help you. We just want to help. Let us play too, please?"

He batted his eyelashes at me, and I laughed. "You're ridiculous. I promise I'll share when I have a better idea of what's going on, and that's the most you're getting out of me right now. Go find your own leads and leave a girl alone."

I shooed them away and powered up my laptop. I only used the desktop computer for rounds of four-suit spider solitaire and random web surfing, because while I loved the guys in the newsroom, I didn't trust them to keep their noses out of my business for as long as it took me to visit the ladies' room. Remembering my promise, I dialed a contact at ATF to see if I could get him to squirm a bit on Michigan. Sometimes, it was what they _didn't_ say that proved even more important than what they would say.

Fifteen minutes later, I gave Tyler an update from my friend at the bureau. Four SWAT teams had been deployed from the new ATF fortress in Washington's NoMa district, destination classified. And here's where the unspoken stuff came into play, because while my contact wouldn't confirm where they were headed and I was far too slick to pose a direct question to him in the first place because putting him in that position would have slammed the gate in my face forever, he did mention that there were no sanctioned flights of more than two hours on the log. I promised him rounds of dirty martinis at Bar Rouge the next time I was in town, and we ended the call as the best of friends.

All three men in the newsroom jumped into action, abandoning me as they scrambled over AP wire reports to make sure nobody else had picked this up yet. Newton was on the horn with Victor, the executive producer, trying to arrange a nine PM flight to Detroit with a crew.

I tapped the side of my laptop keyboard, deep in thought. The text I got from Renee right before air tonight was cryptic and disturbing, but I had no way of following up on it at the moment. It would have to wait until morning. Opening my browser, I typed "NYC area mental institutions" into the search bar and hit "Enter". I could immediately discount most of the public facilities, because there was no way the Brandons would have permitted their daughter to bunk with the street nuts at Bellvue Psych. Would they want her on Long Island? In Westchester? Jersey? It would definitely be local, wherever it was. I amended the search to include "Private" and came up with six possibilities, which I sent to my iPhone.

Tyler, Newton, and Eric disappeared from the newsroom while I worked, presumably on their way to Detroit. The room was quiet now, as quiet as it ever got, giving me too much time to think about things I would rather have avoided. Fortunately, the overnight guys would be wandering in shortly like randy buffalos.

Ben strolled into the bullpen and swung his head around. "Just you, Swan?" I nodded and motioned for him to pull up a desk corner. When he didn't say anything else after a moment or two, I looked up from my screen to see what he needed.

"Listen, Bella, I like you," he said.

I laughed at him. "Isn't that going to be a problem with Angela? She doesn't look like the type to share."

He rolled his eyes. "Be serious for five minutes. You're coming to Dan's memorial service tomorrow, right?"

"Of course. Two o'clock at Riverside. I'll be there."

"I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm going to give you a heads-up. The brass are probably going to approach you about taking the chair on a permanent basis - but there's a catch."

"What's the catch? I have to dye my hair blonde and get a lobotomy? Okay, I'll stop," I amended, holding my hands up in surrender as the expression on Ben's face once again morphed into irritation.

"The catch is that they want to rework the show and deliver the broadcast with a team instead of just one anchor."

I furrowed my brow at him. "So, two anchors? Why? What's the benefit?"

Ben shrugged his shoulders. "If I had to guess - and I do, because it's not as though they've asked for my opinion on the subject - I'd say that the team approach makes the news more accessible to the average viewer. People don't seem to want their news from a lone voice of authority anymore. That's a decades-old model, one that worked when Americans still believed that politicians were above reproach and nobody cheated in baseball. Today, not so much. I think they're hoping to create a more modern dynamic. With a team, there's an unspoken give-and-take that looks friendlier and more authentic to people, because the sharing of information usually doesn't occur in a vacuum in the real world."

"So if you're right and they're seriously considering me for one chair, who are they looking at for the other chair?"

"No idea. I know they were talking about getting a real investigative journalist for the gig, like a Woodward, on the younger side. Maybe not as young as you are - within a decade or so, though. They're looking for vitality, but with serious news chops. Think Anderson Cooper."

"Ben, you know that if Coop wasn't improbably well-groomed and sensitive, I'd be all over him."

"I hear his apartment is decorated entirely in shades of white," Ben grinned.

"Yeah, I've got no chance. I know it. Don't rub it in."

"So I don't know who they're looking at for the job, but I can guarantee it'll be a serious journalist, not a hothouse flower like Dan," Ben continued. "My hand to God, if I had a clue I'd share it with you."

"Do you think they'll go to print guys, or are they only looking at people who've been on camera before?"

Ben scratched his head. "Honestly, I don't think camera experience is going to outweigh the vibe they're aiming for. They don't want a pretty, empty head. They want a news guy, someone in the mold of Cronkite or Rather, but of course he can't be a total troll, either, because if there's bad news coming, it's easier to take from a handsome face. Christ, look at what happened when Nixon debated Kennedy."

"I'm having a tough time figuring out why they'd seriously consider me for the chair," I confessed. "I'm an understudy, and I don't want the gig if it means I'll be pulled out of the bullpen and dumped in an office somewhere, spending my days with stylists who'll wash my hair for me."

"Hear them out," he advised. "You can always say 'no'. You'd be a fool to, but that's your choice. Don't tell me you don't dream about being Christiane Amanpour every night, because I know better."

"I'm not denying it. But there's a world of difference between Christiane Amanpour and Barbara Walters, and I don't want to be Barbara Walters."

"Yes, there is. Barbara could buy a small nation with her salary, speech defect or no speech defect."

I put my hand on Ben's shoulder and squeezed his bicep. "Thanks, Ben. I really appreciate the warning. If I do end up in the chair, I promise to make bald Walter's life so miserable that he runs screaming back to whatever local news program he terrorized before he was dumped on us."

"Keep this info on the QT, Swan. I just didn't want you to be blindsided tomorrow if it happens." I nodded my head and smiled at him, and he patted my back before he walked away.

_Well, hell._On the downside, committing to the broadcast every night meant less time doing what I loved to do best, which was chasing a story and wrestling it to the ground, tickling all the truth out of it until it begged for mercy. On the upside, real fame, and with time, the power and budget to go after whatever story I wanted to get. Sharing the desk meant halving the workload, in theory. The focus wouldn't be solely on me. And if they were serious about bringing in a real journalist, this could keep me on my game and actually be kind of fun.

I mentally scrolled through the list of possible candidates in my head. I followed news the way other people followed sports or celebrities. I could tell you who broke which major stories, who won which Polk, which Peabody, which Pulitzer, which year. Anyone can report on war and scandal, but to do so with an eye for the poetry in the madness is an art, and most of the embedded journalists I'd met wore their flak jackets like a fashion statement. Serious journalists, at least by my definition of the term, were woefully few and far between. I was about the news even when nobody was watching me.

Would the brass try to lure Coop away from CNN? It would be a dream date for me, all social implications to the contrary, because I recognized that he understood the fever to _know_. What would prompt him to surrender half the spotlight to a virtual unknown, though? Richard Behar was a little outside the decade parameter, but he'd be great too. On the print side, maybe David Barstow? Again, easily older than me by more than a decade, but the Pulitzer and his work at _The New York Times_ certainly made him convenient and noteworthy, and I'd met him on more than a few occasions. I was frustrated that it had never occurred to me to delve too deeply into the ages and lives of the wire reporters I respected, but I had always been drawn to their words and not the way they looked. They were men and women who told the hard truths that nobody else wanted to look for. They spoke for those who had no voice. What they did changed lives and circumstances every day of the year, without guns, or votes, or money. They just told the truth as they found it, and often the world shifted to accommodate that uncovered reality.

The tiny clock at the bottom of my screen announced that it was after ten. Sighing, I packed up my laptop, shoved it into my messenger bag, and trudged over to the elevator. Dan's memorial service the following day would do him proud. It was destined to be full of false praise, political jockeying, and ass-kissing. it would mirror the life of the man we were gathered to honor. Dan was a haircut. If the network was serious about making the kind of change Ben was talking about, they'd need more than a haircut to get the job done.

Renee still hadn't answered my text from earlier, so I tried calling her. She picked up on the third ring. "Mom?" I said, ending the word far more loudly than I began it, because wherever she was, it was noisy as hell.

"Honey," she answered, hiding a clever little reminder in the greeting that she preferred it when I used her first name instead of the title to which she is genetically and biologically entitled, because she still doesn't see herself as being old enough to be anyone's mother. My fleeting thought was that surely menopause must have been a hint on the subject, but this was well-traveled ground between us, and something I really didn't want to revisit any time soon.

"Any updates on the Alice situation?" _Alice_. My sweet soul sister. The guilt hit me squarely in the solar plexus as I realized we hadn't spoken for almost a month. How could I ever be too busy to spend time with her? She was always busy too, though. And yet, had I stayed in better contact with her, I wouldn't be hearing about this latest development from a woman who was more than 2,000 miles removed from the situation.

"Hang on," she yelled into the phone. I heard some bustle in the background, and then suddenly her end of the line got far more quiet. "Ah. I'm outside. Can you hear me better now?"

"Yeah. So what's going on?"

"I honestly don't know. I have the information second-hand as it is. You remember Cerrita, that awful woman who lived next door to us when you were all in high school? She's in Port Townsend now. Anyway, she called me to gossip about it. I have no idea how she heard about it - it's not as though she and Margaret were ever really close, and it must be - what? - a decade or so since the Brandons moved out of Forks. She seemed pretty sure about the fact that it happened sometime late last week."

"Did she say where they'd taken Alice? Is it somewhere here in New York?"

"No, she didn't say, but I can't imagine they put her on a plane. From the sound of things, she was really out of it. Poor girl," my mother murmured. "Are you going to call Margaret? I think you should at least make the effort to see if you can visit Alice, wherever she is. You two could always cheer each other up when things were bad."

I rolled my eyes and tried to get a grip on my irritation. "Of course I'm going to try and visit her. I just wish I'd known about it sooner. I'll call them in the morning - it's too late now. Are you okay? Where's dad? Where are you?"

She laughed. "Charlie's at a PBA meeting in Port Angeles. I'm in Seattle for the week with Patty and Rags - there were two new art exhibits we wanted to catch and now we're at this crazy club with a bunch of Patty's old college freaks."

"Well, don't let the frat boys there bring out your inner cougar," I grinned. "And don't let Rags drive, because she's a lunatic. Take a cab."

"Cab, schmab - we'll stumble back to the hotel like the respectable drunks we are. It's only two blocks from here."

"Mom - Renee - really, don't make me worry about you, too. I'm freaked out enough about Alice as it is. Please take a cab."

"Sure, honey, whatever you say. I should get back inside. Is everything okay with you?"

"I'm fine," I answered, debating over whether I should tell her about the possible anchor gig. I decided against it because I knew that she wouldn't focus on it now anyway, and there was no point in saying anything until I knew whether or not Ben's intel was accurate. "Take care, okay? I'll call you guys over the weekend. Love you."

"Love you too, little girl. Be good. Hey - hold the door!" I could hear her drift away from the conversation as she hung up on me.

After crawling home to my small one-bedroom on 67th and Second, I nuked a little leftover pasta for dinner and tried to shut my mind down for the next few hours. There seemed to be too much going on and yet oddly, at the same time, not enough was happening. I missed Alice, and I was scared to find out how far she'd slipped this time. I was nervous about the memorial, and what I'd say if the execs actually offered me a shot at the chair. I wondered who might be tagged to sit next to me if I said 'yes' to the opportunity. And if I was being brutally honest, I worried a little bit about my guys locking horns with the Michigan militia, because those people were hardcore and they hated journos the way Yankees fans hated Red Sox fans. I wished I were on the shoot with them.

When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed confusing dreams about skydiving. My parachute was strong, but my arms were tied behind my back.

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**A/N**: Hey there - welcome back (or really just plain 'welcome', if this is your first trip on the crazy train). Okay, this one's going to be a slow burn, so please strap in and settle back. I swear to you that once we get the ball rolling, there will be action! and snark! and romance! and tap dancing! and particle physics!

Thank you for joining me.


	2. Cold Open

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Cold Open

When the alarm on my phone rang at 5:45 AM, I rolled over and told it to go to hell. It took a solid five minutes for me to fully realize that phones don't, in fact, obey instructions that way, and by the time I sat up and fumbled with the buttons on the left-hand side to make the annoying little marvel stop barking at me, my mind was already racing with the things on deck for me that day.

Eight drops of Visine and a Red Bull later, I was finally ready to slither out of bed. I never slept well when I had a lot on my mind, and envied people who could just drift off into downy dreams of ponies and ice cream and marshmallow clouds, because none of my dreams ever seemed to feature anything that harmless. I was always falling, or running down endless corridors, or panicked by the loss of some vital item. In my dreams, my hands were always either too small or too clumsy to open a door or hold onto a rope, and my feet were too large to run as fast or as smoothly as I needed to.

I shoved my dream-self's inadequacies and insecurities into the overflowing closet at the back of my mind and slammed the door shut on the mess in there. The day was a day for cool confidence and calm surfaces, and betraying any hint of doubt about myself was dangerous. 'Big leagues call for big egos,' I chanted, echoing the sentiment shared by a particularly jaded professor of mine at Columbia's J-School. I didn't mind a bit of pretense in this situation, because telling the truth about how inadequate I felt seemed a little stupid. If the suits were open to the idea of my continuing to chase stories, I'd be a drooling idiot not to grab the chance to own that desk. Right?

I was the smartest person I knew. It was time for the news to be news again.

_I'm a hack and I'm shaking in my boots. Hold me, Coop. I'm going down._

The dueling banjos of insecurity and bravado serenaded me all the way to the bullpen. Newton called me just as I was fighting with the renegade static mat under my chair to let me know that they were camped out in a rented Ford Explorer near Freedom Township in Washtenaw, and strange things were most definitely afoot at the Circle K.

"Do you recognize any of the ATF ops?" I asked him. Maybe if there was a friendly face in the vicinity, someone - Tyler, probably - could work him and figure out what the plan was.

"Not yet. They've got two mobile command centers posted within a quarter-mile of each other, and there's a whole lot of standing around at the moment. The black trucks aren't even here . On the plus side, there's this old lady who keeps coming out of her double-wide to offer us awesome home-baked cookies."

"Do the guys in the Detroit bureau know you're taking a leak on their turf yet?"

Newton chuckled. "I think Eric made 'em dizzy with a few phone calls about a film shoot a hundred miles from here. He was _really_obnoxious - you would have been so proud of him. When they figure it out, we'll be in a world of shit, though. Better buy foreign cars for a while, because those guys know people in this neck of the woods who can do bad things to brake lines and steering columns."

"I realize I'm talking to the wrong person on this, but please don't do anything stupid. You know what Victor says."

"Yeah, yeah - report the news, don't become the story. We're cool, I swear. You'll represent at the service this afternoon?"

I hesitated before answering, because none of them had any idea about what might or might not be in the cards for me with regard to the big desk and the glory. "You know it. Think of me when you're chewing on those cookies, because I'll be stuck in a room with a bunch of stiffs, honoring the stiffest stiff of them all."

"I'm gonna do you a solid and not mention all this 'stiff' talk to Tyler. You can pay me back by letting me take you out for a drink when we get home."

"Newton," I sighed, not wanting to have to refuse him again, and wondering when he'd catch a hint that it was never going to be like that between us. "Don't make me call that sweet little old lady in her double-wide and ask her if she can sprinkle some arsenic on your treats."

"I'm resilient, Bella," he laughed. "Tough as nails."

"Thick as concrete is what you are. Let me go - I have three thousand things to do before I have to kill my afternoon at the memorial. Call me if something interesting happens, and stay safe."

I spent the rest of the morning in an Avid closet trying to crash the piece I'd done the previous day on three case studies in the mortgage crisis. Two inept editors later, I ended up sitting in front of the board and piecing the thing together myself, cursing under my breath the whole time and wishing Alex would hurry up and return from his first vacation in a year, because he was the only person in the whole building who knew how to edit things the way I liked to see them.

I tried reaching the Brandons on every number I had for them, but either they were screening their calls or they were nowhere in the vicinity of a phone, because every line went unanswered. In desperation, I faxed a note over to the line in their study at the house in Scarsdale, hoping that Mr. Brandon would at least take a look at it and have mercy on me. I left two messages on Alice's cell phone as well, trying not to sound as frantic as I felt. She was always such a study in contradictions; the strongest, daintiest, sunniest, most wistful person I'd ever met, and her heart had always seemed to be outsized in that minikin figure of hers. I just wanted to find her and squeeze her hand and will her back to me, back to the present from wherever her mind had wandered off to this time.

At 1:30, Paul stepped up to my desk and asked me if we were heading over to the memorial service together. Embry stood right behind him, wearing a truly hideous tie and an expectant look. "Sam and Steve are going to man the fort while we're gone, mostly because they both forgot that the service was today and they're not dressed for the send-off. Or send-up. Or whatever the hell this thing ends up being," Paul smirked. "Let's make tracks, Sparky."

The three of us crammed into a cab and headed uptown to 76th and Amsterdam. The large receiving room at Riverside Memorial Chapel was stuffed to the gills with media honchos and other people of note from every powerful corner of society, all oozing a Canal Street knock-off sincerity. We took up a position near the back wall and sniggered at the crowd while they all milled around, shaking hands and patting backs. Our remarks were not charitable, and covered everything from Katie Couric's bizarre haircut to a brief speculation on how many people in the room had visited the discreet Park Avenue offices of Dr. Sherrell Aston for a little nip and tuck since we'd last seen them up close and personal. Interestingly, the men were outnumbering the women in that regard, which had both Paul and Embry a little spooked.

"Have you ever met Aston? I did a piece on him about two years ago for 'Extra'. Had to haul ass out to the Hamptons and spend the day on the polo grounds. He has a handshake like a dead fish. I guess he doesn't want to injure those zillion dollar mitts of his," Embry grinned.

"You two are cattier than any girls I've ever met. He's supposed to be the best. Jesus, half of New York would be carrying their jowls in their socks if he hadn't gotten those dead hands on their faces," I said. "I wonder if there are any actual news people here, or if it's all just scene junkies." What I didn't say out loud was that I was wondering this because I was hoping to scope out potential contenders for the other anchor chair.

"Well, _we're_ here, Swan," Paul nudged my shoulder.

Fifteen minutes later, as if by the same unspoken consensus a herd of cattle reaches at sunset, everyone began taking seats in the row upon row of pews which mapped the center of the great hall. We snagged seats on the main aisle about ten rows back, feeling as though we should somehow try to stay in the middle of things so as not to make a blatant statement about our lack of respect for our recently-departed colleague.

"Did you know Dan was Jewish?" Embry asked me.

"I didn't know he served any god other than himself, actually, so this is a total surprise to me."

The rabbi stood on a dais at the front of the room, next to an enormous and heavily-airbrushed photo of Dan the Man. He waited while New York's elite found their seats and settled in before clearing his throat to indicate that the show was about to get underway.

"Family, friends, colleagues, and admirers, we're assembled here today to pay tribute to a great man who touched the lives of everyone in this room, and in this nation."

"I know at least four women in the office who'll tell you that's not all he touched," I murmured into Paul's appreciative ear, and he coughed out a laugh, earning him a poke in the ribs from Embry, who seemed to have suddenly developed a sense of decorum.

While the rabbi droned on about Dan's dubious character, I took another opportunity to look around and see who landed where in the pecking order and whether or not I could determine if someone looked less like an item on the social calendar and more like a reporter. I found myself trapped into staring at the back of Anna Wintour's head across from me in the main aisle, and marveled at the fact that she was as durable as Keith Richards - although probably a lot meaner, because I didn't think Keith cared nearly as much about appearances as she does. My eyes finally moved to the row adjacent to mine and I froze.

Directly across from us, one hand on the pew's wooden armrest and the other perched in a slightly impatient fashion on his right thigh as though it wanted to encourage the leg beneath it to stand up and exit this charade, was possibly the most physically attractive man I'd ever seen. His hair was an indescribable shade between red and brown, although somehow brighter than either, hinting at a bit of blonde as well; I was pretty sure Clairol or Loreal would have labeled it something like "Golden Sienna" or "Autumn Splendor". The geometry of his strong jaw was astonishing, forming an almost perfect right angle at the hinge and continuing down to a chin I could only guess would be cloven by one of those Viggo Mortenson chin dimples. Frankly, if I were a chin dimple, it would have been the gig I'd have lobbied for. I couldn't see much of the rest of his face, as he was in profile, but the jaw clearly had cohorts in a straight, strong nose and a slightly pronounced brow. The ear currently facing me was somewhat trapped under all of that Autumn Splendor, but it too looked well-formed and close to the skull, as though it wouldn't dream of being anything less than appropriate for the rest of what was happening on that head. In short, this was a view which no plastic surgeon, no matter how skilled his dead-fish hands might be, could possibly improve.

He was obviously fairly tall as well, and while I couldn't gauge the span of him from this angle, he appeared to be neither too broad nor too narrow in the shoulders. Most of his body was obscured by the side panel of the pew, but his legs rested firmly on the floor, covered in dark gray dress slacks, and his shoes were new, expensive, and black.

Paul's hand grabbed my shoulder and gave me a little shake. "Swan? Did you fall asleep?"

Mortified, I suddenly realized I'd practically leaned over Paul's lap to catch a better look at the man across the aisle. Recovering quickly, I sat up. "I'm here," I muttered. "Just trying to figure out who the underwear model across from us might be." My brain seemed to be having a tough time catching up to the rest of me, and I suddenly realized that my voice was slightly louder than a whisper and the aisle wasn't nearly wide enough to prevent the sound from carrying to the ears around me. The underwear model's head tilted slightly, and he turned his face in my direction as though he'd heard me. I wanted to look away, but his green eyes pinned me into place and I felt myself being assessed and analyzed, helpless to prevent him from cataloguing whatever he found in my answering stare. Those eyes were alive and intelligent, but ice cold at the same time.

Someone else had stepped up to the dais in the meantime, and I finally managed to break away from the eye-lock to focus on what was happening around me. I immediately recognized the new speaker, because he was one of the very few people in the network's hierarchy for whom I had unreserved respect and admiration.

"I first met Dan more than two decades ago, when I was brought on board to helm the New York bureau," Carlisle Cullen began, and his voice was quiet, but penetrating all the same. "Barely three weeks into my tenure, the Challenger space shuttle explosion occurred, and I had my first real look at how deceptively strong Dan really was. In the dozen or so years which followed, Dan proved to me time and again that his first order of business was always to keep the nation calm and focused no matter what crisis we faced. The reassurance he offered in moments of tragedy uplifted and inspired everyone who watched him, and that reassurance often came a high price for him, because he was forced to absorb the details of catastrophic events in full view of the world while we updated him through his earpiece. Although I'd moved on to establish the network's charitable arm by the time 2001 rolled around, I watched Dan deliver the news throughout the day on 9/11. He was absolutely magnificent that day, fielding and sorting the conflicting reports without letting himself become overwhelmed by the scope of the event. He was steady, and he provided the solid ground we all desperately needed at that moment in time.

"The world in which we live is such an uncertain place. When things are going well, we tend to forget that this is not the case for everyone around the globe. While broadcasting news about this often doesn't move people to act upon what we're telling them, we can hope in some small way to remind the viewers to count their blessings during the fat years, because the lean years are inevitably close behind. Dan made very sure he never gloated during the good times, because he'd seen the bad times too, and he knew that we'd all be tested again soon enough. He only wanted to serve as a constant throughout those periods of transition, so that if nothing else, viewers came away with a fixed point on the horizon."

"Holy shit," Embry whispered as Carlisle picked up his notes and descended from the platform. "He actually made me rethink my position on Dan as a human being."

I could only nod in response, because that speech had made me realize for perhaps the first time in my life that the news wasn't just for me or about me. The news was about everyone, and the way in which it was delivered was sometimes equally as important as who cooked it and brought it to the pass. Nobody outside of the kitchen really cared about the chef. They only saw the waiter, and how the waiter served their dinner made as much of a difference to the entire experience as what was on the plate.

The moments it took for me to turn this over in my mind were the only moments I needed to also reach the conclusion that, provided the network was willing to let me continue to chase stories, no power on earth would keep me from that anchor chair. I wanted the ball, because I knew I could carry it the way Carlisle suggested it should be carried. And I would carry it in a more complete way than Dan ever dreamed of doing, because it was intensely personal to me in a way that it never was for him.

I feigned attention throughout the remainder of the service, my earlier nerves long gone and replaced with a sort of eager anticipation. When the last fawner had said his piece on the dais, the rabbi concluded the service with an announcement that a brief reception would be held in the adjoining room, and he welcomed us to walk amongst one another, sharing our own reminiscences of Dan and meeting others who joined us today to celebrate his legacy.

"Free chow," Paul said, in the time-honored tradition of all journalists everywhere. "Let's go scope it out."

It wasn't until we stood that I remembered the underwear model, but when I turned around to see if he was making his way to the reception, I saw nothing but well-groomed heads clogging up the aisle in a race to get to the canapes and cocktails. Paul, Embry and I wriggled our way into the outbound stream, nodding at familiar faces and moving along to avoid stemming the flow.

A glass of pretty decent sauvignon blanc and several crab rangoons later, the boys wandered off to spin the wheel of fortune with some slightly intimidated-looking debutantes. I was quite clearly an unwelcome accessory to the crime, so I stayed behind, doing my best to look cool and available should someone from the network decide that this was an ideal time to broach the big subject.

Fewer than five minutes of circulating later, I found myself rangoon-to-rangoon with Peter Laurent, the president of the network's news division. "Isabella," he smiled. "The very person I was hoping to find. Can you tear yourself away from the mingling and chat with me for a few minutes? I have a few people who would very much like to meet the woman who jumped into the breach and saved us all this week."

"Of course, Peter - it's a pleasure, always," I answered, because in truth, Peter was a decent man and had been a great champion for the division. He slipped a hand underneath my elbow and guided me over to a corner of the room, where several other executives were waiting for us. I took a deep breath and focused my energy on not folding like a cheap tent. I wanted this now, and I'd be damned if I got in my own way.

I was introduced to and shook hands with the three men we joined, all of whom were high up in the network's corporate food chain, although to the best of my knowledge none of them had ever made their ways from the executive suites on the 48th floor down to the bullpen.

After a few moments of "job well done"s and "you make us proud"s, there was The Pause, and Peter opened fire. "So, Isabella, I have to tell you that my motive for bringing you over here wasn't just so we could thank you for being such a trooper this week. We've been involved in several lengthy meetings over the past few days, trying to determine whether the time is right for us to attempt to bring the national news into the twenty-first century. We think it is, and we'd like to discuss the possibility of your helping us to make that happen. Would you be open to a discussion on the subject?"

I looked him in the eye, unafraid to show him that yes, I was up for the challenge. "I'd certainly be interested to hear your plans and how you think I might help. Can you tell me more?"

Peter smiled, and once they saw him do so, the other three men smiled right along with him. "I'd love to. As I'm sure you know, Diane Sawyer's been tapped to replace Charlie Gibson on 'World News Tonight' when he retires from the chair at the end of the year. With Katie Couric anchoring the national broadcast over at CBS, it's clear that the news is trending toward a more female-friendly format. We certainly feel it's important that our team represent fully half of our audience, but at the same time, we think it's no longer in keeping with the times to make this an 'either/or' proposition. What we're thinking is that we'll have dual anchors for the broadcast. Both genders represented in equal measure, both invested in the process of news gathering and dissemination. Our chief goal is to have our anchors be authentic - not merely conduits, but actual participants in the stories they're presenting. To be perfectly frank, we think it's time to bring a little youth and energy to the program in order to take on the increasing threat to our viewership from sources like CNN, and we'd definitely like you to consider assuming the female half of that equation."

The part of my brain that hovered just above this interaction begged the rest of me to just stay cool and not screw up the moment. I let his exploratory overture sit there for a few beats while I drew a breath.

"I'm incredibly flattered that you consider me capable of stepping into the role, Peter. You know that over the past five years, this network - and the newsroom to which I practically have my mail forwarded because I don't ever seem to be away from it for more than a few hours at a time - has become my home. The plans you have for reimagining the broadcast sound really exciting, and I'd love to hear more about it. I'm definitely interested."

Peter put his hand on my shoulder, but the action was celebratory instead of condescending. "I'm really glad to hear you say that, Isabella."

"It's Bella, please," I smiled at him, and then I allowed myself to ask the one question I couldn't wait another moment for him to answer. "Have you given any thought as to whom you'd like to see fill the other chair?"

Peter looked over at the other three suits before returning his eyes to mine. "As a matter of fact, we've given a great deal of thought to the subject. We want to make sure that whoever joins you at the desk is as invested in the process of news as we know you to be. We considered several candidates from various broadcast outlets, but ultimately felt that the right man for the job would likely be found deep in the trenches of global reportage, because you bring a wealth of experience on the national side and it balances out the scales nicely to bring in someone with an equal or greater amount of experience on the international side. I believe, and I know that everyone here agrees with me, that we've found what we were looking for, and we're beyond thrilled that he seems interested as well." He looked around the room for a moment. "I take it you're familiar with the name Edward Cullen?"

_Edward Cullen_. Pulitzer 2004 for a series of reports filed from Thailand shortly after the Tsunami. Pulitzer 2006 for exposé on US munitions dumps in civilian Afghan neighborhoods. Pulitzer 2007 for the only Western reportage inside the borders during the Myanmar uprising. Shared Pulitzer 2008 for a series of reports from a renegade faction camp of the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam in the heart of the Sri Lankan jungle. Was I familiar with the name Edward Cullen? Was I _familiar _with it?

I wanted to laugh in Peter's face. Instead, I merely bit my lip and nodded my head, trying not to whimper. Yes, I might have heard the name once or twice before. Yes, he might just be the most well-respected journalist of the past several decades. Yes, he was only the guy any serious reporter would measure him- or herself against and invariably find themselves lacking. Oh, _Edward Cullen?_Sure, I might have heard of him.

And as the astonishment was tumbling around in my head, the natural reporter's instinct to connect dots was feverishly sending out distress signals to my brain, waving synaptic arms in a desperate attempt to help me figure out some vital bit of information my consciousness had yet to process.

_Edward Cullen. Cullen. Carlisle. Cullen._

I had a truly humbling private moment, during which I was forced to accept that I was a complete idiot for never having made _that_ particular connection before. As I was marveling at my own gross stupidity, I looked up to see Peter raising his arm in a gesture to someone at some distance behind me in the crowded room. Christ, I wasn't certain that I had enough gas in the tank to power through the biggest job offer of my career and an introduction to the industry wunderkind as a possible partner-in-crime all within the span of fifteen minutes, but I didn't seem to have a whole lot of options to consider, so I did my best to brace myself and prayed the treads on my self-esteem would grip for another five minutes. Even though I'd gotten pretty good at fronting over the years, this was an awful lot for a small-town girl like me to absorb with any degree of equanimity.

"Carlisle, Edward, thanks for coming over. I'd like to introduce you to Isabella Swan," Peter was saying. Steeling myself, I turned to greet the men who'd just joined us, but the bland and pleasant words on my lips died a premature death, leaving me little more than a mute with my hand in mid-air.

"Edward Cullen," he said, the impassive green eyes resuming their calculations about me. "Many things, but never an underwear model."

# # #

A/N - The response to the first chapter completely overwhelmed and delighted me. Thank you all so much for saying such great things and for alerting or favoriting the story!

PS - some folks have been mentioning the serving of treif like crab at a Jewish reception. It was a deliberate attempt on my part to highlight the incongruity of the proceedings, and I hope you'll forgive me. I couldn't resist - I almost added scallops wrapped in bacon, but pulled myself back from the brink at the last minute.


	3. Judder

# # #

Judder

Of the parents I was given, it was generally my father who supplied all of the practical advice during my formative years. He was always the "wear a scarf"/"look both ways"/"don't start fires indoors" kind of preceptor, while my mother offered me helpful tips on how to walk in high heels without maiming myself and ten quick ways to test whether or not a man was attracted to me. Both sources of information have proven useful in their own ways, but neither one of them seemed to have provided me with a single hint as to how I should handle this particular situation, so I was forced to rely on what I'd learned in the guerilla combat of an all-male newsroom, where a strong offense is always the best defense. I swallowed my mortification like a mouthful of battery acid and just gave as good as I'd gotten, trying not to focus on the fact that I was about to burn someone whose work I'd adored for years.

"Isabella Swan. Many things as well, but not especially interested in the color of your parachute," I volleyed pleasantly, over-enunciating every syllable and willing myself to hold his gaze and return it with a calm assurance I was nowhere close to actually feeling. His eyebrow lifted slightly - in appreciation? annoyance? Whatever it was, I was pretty sure we weren't done with it by a long shot, but I was clearly already down by one. In addition to embarrassing me, that galled me as well. We were keeping score, I was sure we were, and I didn't like to lose.

"Erm," Carlisle finally said, clearing his throat and obviously hoping that by doing so, he might also clear the not-insubstantial tension in the immediate vicinity.

"Yes. Fascinating reverse resumé game the two of you are playing," Peter laughed, apparently delighted by the fact that Edward and I had clicked on any level, even if it seemed to be an antagonistic one. "_I've_ never been a toll collector on the Triboro Bridge."

Edward held my gaze for a moment longer before turning to address Peter, and when he did so, he wore the most charming and relaxed smile under the sun. "Sorry - I'm still a little jet-lagged," he apologized with an adorable shake of his head, and I was amazed to discover that this explanation actually _worked_ for him. Then he turned that charming smile in my direction and grasped my hand to shake it. "It's nice to finally meet you, Isabella," he said, without a hint of irony. "Peter has nothing but wonderful things to say about you. I'm sorry that I haven't seen more of your broadcasts. I'm rarely anywhere near a television - although I was once lucky enough to catch an episode of _The Simpsons_ in Russian while holed up in an apartment in the Chechens."

The words coming out of his mouth were genial and complimentary, but the look...the look said something altogether different. The look suggested that I might want to visit a smithy and get myself kitted out in some chainmail, because he was every inch the worthy jousting partner and planned on proving as much to me. His hand was cool, and dry, and smooth, and I couldn't escape the impression that it too was trying to learn some of my secrets via skin-to-skin transference. 'Good luck to you,' I thought, determined now to hold my own no matter what.

"Your work speaks for itself, of course," I countered. "I hear there's a price on your head in Myanmar."

"Oh, I'm wanted in many places," he smiled innocuously, and it took everything in me not to rise to the bait he dangled.

"Yet another reason for us to be happy about your being back in the States," Carlisle laughed, flicking his eyes toward mine in friendly understanding and the hope that he might be able to deflect any possible response from me. "Your mother blames every gray hair she has on you."

"Okay," Peter said, briskly rubbing his hands together. "Now that you're both aware of our plans for the reworked show, I'd like to sit down to discuss it in greater detail. Clearly this is not the place for that discussion, so how does dinner tomorrow night sound? We're obviously under some fairly serious time constraints with regard to how quickly we need to move on this plan. Do you have an agent?"

The remark was probably addressed to Edward, but we both simultaneously answered "No," and then looked at each other in surprise.

"Good. I mean, good because they only slow down the contract process and it's not as though either one of you needed an agent to get where you are at the moment. The team and I will meet with each of you separately this afternoon to discuss specifics, and then we'll all get together tomorrow evening to outline a launch strategy. Bella, Richard's agreed to handle the evening and weekend shows during the transition, so you don't have to worry about taking the chair again after tonight for the next little while. We want you to focus on the future of the program. Lauren's going to fill in for Richard on the 11:30 broadcast." He paused to take stock of our expressions, and must have found something slightly troubling there. "I'm sorry. I'm assuming that having met each other, you're both still interested in moving forward on this. Are you?"

Although neither one of us looked at the other, I felt the strangest sense of inevitability, something similar to the moment at which the safety bar clicks into place before a rollercoaster ride gets underway. I swore that nothing was going to keep me away from that chair, and nothing definitely included the enigmatic not-an-underwear-model with the chin dimple.

"Yes," we answered in stereo again, and Peter laughed. "Already answering as a team. I like it. Let's make it seven tomorrow evening at Jean Georges?"

I wanted to be the first to walk away from this confabulation, so I reassembled my hairline-fractured professional veneer and shook Peter's hand again. "I'm very sorry, but I do need to run back to the newsroom and check up on the guys in Michigan before we go to air. We're short-staffed and it makes me jumpy to be out of touch for so long."

"Go, go," Peter said, taking my hand and warmly shaking it. "We'll catch up with you in the studio at seven after you sign off."

"It was very nice to finally meet you, Isabella," Carlisle said with a smile, taking my hand after Peter released me. Then he leaned closer to my ear, and in an undertone, he murmured, "Don't take your hands off the wheel. You'll be just fine." I marveled at the fact that while the son was a bit of an x-factor, the father was downright cryptic as well, and so that apple didn't fall far from the tree. Precisely which wheel he was referring to, and the manner in which I was meant to hold it, were left for me to figure out, but he seemed supportive and for that I was grateful.

"Carlisle, it was truly a pleasure meeting you. Gentlemen, I look forward to talking with you again after the broadcast," I said, acknowledging the three suits. I knew I'd have to say something to Edward, but what to say posed a bit of a dilemma. Parting shot, or gracious leave-taking? I really wanted to zing him just to let him know that despite my unfortunate comment, his looks weren't enough to get him anywhere as far as I was concerned, but this man was also responsible for some of the best reporting I'd ever read and insulting him seemed kind of childish, especially if we were going to have to work together.

The brief internal debate created an opening for him, and I began to see what Carlisle might have meant about keeping my hands on the wheel.

"I call dibs on the camera-left chair," Edward announced quietly, as the men around us chatted amongst themselves. "And the left side of anything else you ask me to share as well. See you tomorrow, Mary Hart." And he offered me a sarcastic little index-finger salute to the forehead in dismissal.

"I don't - I'm not - you're-" I spluttered, furious and actually blushing, although more from anger and frustration than from embarrassment. I leaned in to his perfect ear and seethed, "I hope my voice gives _you_ a seizure." Then I plastered a pleasant smile on my face and said goodbye in a louder voice for the benefit of the clueless executives around me as he grinned.

So, Edward Cullen, then. Many things, but most definitely a bit of an arrogant prick. I'd been hoping for someone who would challenge me as a reporter. I realized a bit late that I should have qualified that wish by clearly stating the person shouldn't also make me want to stab him with something very sharp and very rusty. Still, if he was indeed the person responsible for all of the reports which sported his byline, then he was a name to conjure with, and I might actually glean a thing or twenty from him before I murdered him while he was distracted by some inevitably blonde thing.

Practical Bella advised me to suck it up and do what I'd done for the majority of my career: learn from the best and ignore the rest. I'd had mentors who shot staples and rubber bands at my head. I'd come into the newsroom in the early days before the boys decided I was one of them and found my chair seat reupholstered in maxi-pads with flexi-wings. Was it harassment? Sure it was. Could I have gone to HR and made a stink about it? Absolutely. But while it might have put an end to the hazing, it would most definitely have ensured that I was never seen as an equal, and that was unacceptable to me. If Edward wanted to be the biggest pain my ass had ever seen, he'd have to work overtime. And while he was working on that, I'd learn his tricks and make him sorry he'd ever doubted me.

I collected Seth and Paul from the debutantes and we headed back down to the office. Newton wasn't answering his phone, which led me to guess that his mouth was stuffed with trailer-park cookies or he was taking a nap, because if something was going on we'd have heard about it by now. I checked my voicemail just to make sure I hadn't missed anything during the service, and saw that I had a message from a Westchester area code.

"Hello, Bella, this is Leonard Brandon," Alice's father's deep, stiff voice announced in my ear. "Apologies for not returning your call earlier. Alice is...ahm...ill, at the moment, and we've sent her away for a bit to recuperate. I expect she'll rejoin us within the next week or two. Margaret and I appreciate your concern and I assure you we'll pass along your 'get well' wishes to Alice. I hope you're doing well. Please give our regards to your parents, and I'm sure we'll be seeing you again in the near future. Thank you again, and goodnight."

I wanted to throw my phone against the wall in frustration. I'd known this man my entire life, and despite the fact that his daughter and I had been best friends since the first day of kindergarten, he insisted on treating me as though I was some kind of interloper in his very private world. Now I'd have to hike up to Scarsdale tomorrow morning to knock on the door and see if Margaret or the housekeeper would crack, because I was sick of not knowing where Alice was or what was happening to her. I needed some real answers. I needed my friend, and she clearly needed me.

Paul bounced his shoulder against mine as we waited for the elevator back up to the bullpen. "What's up, Sparky? You look pissed."

"I look pissed because I _am_ pissed. It's nothing - family stuff," I grumbled, and then felt the need to change the subject before the tidal wave of frustration overwhelmed me and joined the roiling irritation meeting Edward Cullen had ignited until I turned into a walking, talking, flame-throwing bitch.

Michigan was still quiet - Steve and Eric were in hourly contact with each other, but there were no signs of the black trucks and very little activity surrounding the command centers, so the guys were just hanging around and trying to pick up whatever information they could by bribing stray ATF ops with cookies. Victor and Ben had made the decision to sit on the information for the time being after receiving a not-too-pleasant call from the ATF fortress. The bad news was that the guys in the Detroit bureau had finally caught wind of our presence in their neighborhood, and they were pretty ticked off about the trespassing. Victor shut them up with some withering remarks about how they had nobody but themselves to blame if they couldn't keep an eye on what was going down in front of them, but we knew it would come back to bite us somewhere down the line.

The broadcast was uneventful - Walter was a jerk, the random careless misspellings on the prompter script continued unabated, and there was a horsefly the size of a pterodactyl buzzing around the studio until it gave up and committed suicide by frying itself on the key light. When I'd signed off, I saw that Peter was standing at the back of the studio, waiting to continue our conversation. The suits were nowhere to be found, but he greeted me and led me up to the executive floor and into a small conference room.

"Bella, we'll get to contract specifics when the rest of the guys join us in a moment, but I need to ask you whether you have a problem with Edward," he said. "I didn't get where I am by being a jovial, clueless idiot, and it's obvious there's some kind of tension between the two of you. Care to discuss?"

I momentarily debated telling him exactly what had happened, but found that I'd sooner face the fate of that horsefly than confess the embarrassment. "Listen, Peter - I think we're just both dedicated people and strong personalities, but I have an enormous amount of respect for the work he's done and I'm sure we'll settle into a great working...relationship," I answered. Shit, why was it so uncomfortable to use a word like "relationship" to describe working with him? I hoped like hell that Peter hadn't noticed the hesitation.

"So, no major ego situation I need to deal with, here? I need you to be sure, because as much as I like you and think you'll be great, I am not spending a ton of my budget on a launch push for this if you two can't figure out how to work together. And to be frank with you, the cache he brings with him for his work in the field is something I'm really counting on to bring substance to the show." Peter was being delicate about it, but what I heard was that of the two of us, I was the more expendable.

I tried not to let the resentment overwhelm me. Instead, I was going to make it my new mission to reverse his thinking. "No problem at all on my end, Peter. I assure you, I'm excited and can't wait to get to work. As long as I get to chase my stories and not spend my days as a hand puppet, this is a dream come true for me. Have you had a similar conversation with Edward? Has he indicated that he'd have a problem working with me?" So help me God, if he'd said one word - _one word_ - to disparage me in any way, I would fry his balls in bacon grease if it was the last thing I did, that arrogant, smirking bas-

"Quite the opposite, actually. Edward was very clear that he was only interested in signing on if you were going to be the other half of the team," Peter responded. "I don't know what you said to him this afternoon, but whatever it was, it clearly made an impression. So if you're really on board, just keep doing whatever voodoo you do. I'll tell you this much: I did hard time in local news all around the country before I got the call for the majors, and I've never seen that kind of chemistry between two anchor people before. You're going to light up the place when you get settled in."

Peter launched into a story about an anchor team he worked with in his first DMA, but I was only listening with half an ear because the rest of me couldn't get past the fact that Edward had specifically demanded me as his co-anchor. My first reaction was shock, followed closely by a feeling of validation. These were quickly replaced by a suspicion that he meant to punish me somehow, and by the time the other executives arrived to begin our contract discussion, my overriding feeling on the matter was horror at the possibility that Edward believed my underwear model comment somehow green-lit any advances he might choose to make toward me.

And just like that, I was back to thinking about frying his balls in bacon grease if he ever gave me cause to suspect things were headed in that direction with him. I marveled at his ability to piss me off from this distance. He was proving to be a sniper in that regard, and I needed to take away his bullets if I was ever going to get the upper hand.

The contract discussion was...interesting. I was glad I was sitting down when they pulled out the proposed figure for my new salary, because the way my knees were knocking was far less noticeable with them safely tucked under the conference table. _Holy crap._ I made an effort to look calm and mildly interested while they were speaking, but there was a huge chunk of me that was stuck in a kind of frozen wonder about the whole thing. I was Bella Swan, the girl most likely to be found in a corner of the library on a Saturday night. The girl who counted on being invisible because invisible meant I could get away with more than the obvious girls. I was brains over beauty, enjoying the fact that while beauty usually won, brains didn't sag or wrinkle and would serve me better over the long term. The conversation happening at this conference table proved to me that occasionally, brains actually did win, and I was glad I'd backed the right horse in that race. The executives talked in a bit of a round song, echoing each other about things like stock options, benefits, rights of refusal, and mid-term renegotiations pending Nielsens during two sweeps periods. I could only hold on to the fact that I'd be making more in one year than my father had made over his entire lifetime, and that I would officially be able to classify myself as a millionaire, even after taxes. The realization almost made me laugh in disbelief.

"I'm sure you want to clear all of this with your attorney," one of the executives was saying. "But assuming that he doesn't find anything amiss, how are you feeling about the offer?"

I honestly wanted to bite my tongue, but this new success made me a little reckless. "I'll definitely need to run it past my attorney and see what _she_ has to say, but I'd have to say that I'm feeling very good about this offer." I'm not Betty Friedan, but the fact that this man sat across from me making assumptions like that really got my goat, especially when I considered the fact that my new salary was probably several multiples of whatever the network was paying him. Sufficiently cowed, he offered me a vaguely apologetic nod and shuffled some papers into the back of his legal pad.

Peter placed the contract into a manila envelope and handed it to me. "Take this copy to your attorney for mark-up. Do you think she'll be able to look at it and have it back to us by Monday? If at all possible, I'd like to finalize everything for a Tuesday press release. We've got 6B on hold to renovate for the new set - it's larger and we have the option to blow out one of the walls to put in a bank of windows behind the desk if that's the way the designers want to go."

"Shouldn't be an issue. I'll give her a call first thing in the morning," I answered. New studio. New set. New possibilities. And almost certainly, new aggravations. I briefly wondered whether the designers would consider building me the same kind of privacy screen you found in limos between the driver and the passenger, so that I could just hit a button if Edward decided to go rogue asshole on me. From what I'd witnessed thus far, I imagined he'd probably just crawl through the sunroof to continue the harassment.

"Okay then, let's table the discussion about what we're thinking for the reformat until tomorrow night's dinner so that everyone involved can have some input. I want you both to really take ownership of the program, Bella. I want it to be personal, but big. We'll make sure there are two key lights, so you both shine," Peter laughed.

"Thank you for the amazing opportunity, Peter. I'm beyond excited and anxious to get started." I shook everyone's hands again, really pretty proud of the fact that I hadn't collapsed or betrayed any kind of shock during the conversation. I was offered this before Edward Cullen decided he wanted my participation. I'd earned this with hard work and good instincts. He, and Coop, and Christiane could go pound sand. I wasn't going to screw this up for any of them, because I was at least their equal now even if I was on the lower end of the pay scale at the moment, as unbelievable as that seemed to me. I wouldn't be there for long.

And my tiny living room was a better place for the _holy shit_! mambo than this room full of suits and corporate-speak.

For the first time in years, I didn't stay in the bullpen that evening. I briefly checked in to make sure that Michigan was still quiet and nothing major had happened in my absence, and then I grabbed my bag and headed home.

I called my parents, of course, and listened to my mother shriek for a little while before my father grabbed the phone and offered his gratitude that a small mountain of debt for my schooling hadn't gone to waste. "Proud of you, kiddo," he grumbled, which for him was something roughly akin to a sixteen-stanza love poem. For the first time in a very long time, I felt tears threaten to set up shop somewhere behind my eyelids, but blinked them away and instead joked that I could finally afford to fund the mid-life crisis trophy of his choice. He snorted and said he'd get right on that by dragging Billy to the Seattle boat show. "You've earned your Grady-White Canyon, Dad. Thanks," I laughed, remembering that he'd locked himself up in the den with his computer for at least an hour the day they released the first pictures of that boat.

"Bell, that's too much boat for a man my age. But hell, if you're offering, I'm taking. Love you."

"Love you too, Dad. Better hang up now so Mom can call Rags. Just let her know she can't tell the world about it because I haven't signed anything yet and it won't be announced until next Tuesday at the earliest, okay? You know how to keep a lid on her."

"Will do. Take care of yourself," he said, and disconnected the call before my mother could attack me with more questions. I hadn't told them about Edward. I hadn't told them anything about the retooled format. I hadn't told them I was struggling to keep a grip on things now that I'd been thrown into the main ring of the news circus. These were all things I needed to tell Alice, and she wasn't here.

That realization finally melted my resolve to remain tear-free for the night, and I wept for the loss of her, for the need of her and the worry for her. If I couldn't share this with Alice, it might as well not be happening at all. Alice was every egg I had in my friendship basket. She was every egg I'd ever needed, too.

As a result, I celebrated my rise to the top with a bottle of Mike's Hard Pink Lemonade and a package of Suzy Q's from the deli downstairs, and I made a silent promise to Alice that when I found her, we'd do it up right.

My trip to the imposing Tudor mansion in Scarsdale the next morning was met with limited success at best. Neither Margaret nor Leonard were home, which actually turned out to be a good thing. I'd only met their maid a handful of times during various runs up to the house with Alice for clothing or furniture swap-outs, but Amelia remembered me well enough and despite her uncertain English, she managed to convey the information that the Brandons had gone to visit Alice at a hospital in New Jersey. I left a little note for Margaret in the hope that she might just be desperate enough to need to talk to someone about the situation, and then headed back to Manhattan to drop off the contract at my lawyer's apartment and psych myself up for a second encounter with my new on-camera counterpart.

"Bring it on, paperboy," I laughed at my mirror. I was awake now, and he wouldn't catch me napping twice. This was my home court - my playground - and the next round belonged to me.

# # #

A/N - Hi there - thanks for sticking around! I don't really like to do this all that much, but I understand that there might be some technical references here with which you're not familiar, so:

**Key light** - the bright, primary light used for talent in a television studio.

**DMA** - how the Nielsen Company (which quantifies television ratings through viewership) defines a city. The acronym stands for "Designated Market Area". If you're in the business of television, this information is life-or-death for you, and determines everything from the size of your market to bragging rights to advertising revenue.

**Sweeps** - a key rating period for television, which occurs four times each year (once every quarter). Again, the numbers here are critical for networks (although my experience has been that with the depth of the demographic breakouts Nielsen provides, a sales staff can spin almost any ratings into some kind of success story - "Look! We're #1 with hamsters ages 12-plus!").

**Mary Hart** - a U.S. entertainment news presenter. In 1991, a neurologist claimed that Mary's voice triggered epileptic seizures in one of his patients.

**"the color of your parachute"** - a reference to a popular career guide called, strangely enough, _What Color is Your Parachute?_

**Judder** - the title of the chapter refers to what happens when you edit together two pieces of footage which were shot at different speeds. There is a slight shaking where the two pieces are spliced.

Thank you all SO much for the wonderful reviews and recs and alertingness that you're doing on this story.

I'm on Twitter if you'd like to chat - WriteOnTime123 - and there's a lovely "Breaking News" thread on Twilighted should you want to join the discussion.


	4. The Politics of Bread

# # #

The Politics of Bread

I've learned several things about business meals over the years. You don't want to be the first person to arrive, because this places you in a position of psychic weakness - you look too eager. You don't want to be the last person to arrive, because this makes you look as though you don't care enough about the meeting, even if you've arrived perfectly on time. Ideally, you are second to arrive. You accomplish this feat by arriving earlyish and claiming a discreet spot in the bar, where you order a drink and then make a break for the restroom the moment you see another meeting attendee walk through the front door.

With these guidelines in mind, I'd arrived at Jean Georges roughly fifteen minutes early, and had situated myself at the far end of the bar, within easy dashing distance to the ladies' washroom. I'd ordered a glass of safe-enough Pinot Grigio and had just taken my first sip when a soft laugh floated directly into my left ear.

"You're not especially stealthy, you know that?"

Edward Cullen. Leaning on the bar, right behind me.

"How long have you been here? I didn't see you come in," I said, turning around to face him. His bright green eyes were deceptively cool. Despite the briefness of our acquaintance, I recognized the same machinery behind them that I'd first seen while we sat across from one another at the memorial service.

"I just got here, actually. Less than a minute ago," he smiled. "I like being second to arrive at meetings like this."

"That's impossible. I've been watching the door the whole time and at no point did I see you walk through it."

Edward looked down at me with something resembling pity. "I never said I came through that door, did I?" He nodded at the bartender and ordered a seltzer with a slice of lime.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Are you accidentally this irritating, or is it something that's just part of your skill set?"

He appeared to give the matter serious consideration for a moment. "A bit of both, probably. Do I irritate you?"

"Frequently," I huffed, and took another sip of my wine. It was time to put him on the defensive, because I was tired of occupying that particular corner of our interactions. "Why did you tell Peter you'd only consider taking the job if I was your co-anchor?"

"I had my reasons."

"And they are...?"

"Not important at the moment," he answered with finality. A devastating grin slowly stretched across his lips. "Will the fact that you think I look like an underwear model cause a problem in our working relationship?"

Jesus, did I need to slay that ghost in a hurry. "It wasn't necessarily a compliment, Edward. And rest assured you're not in any danger around me. Your particular brand of _charm_ isn't my cup of tea."

He raised his eyebrows at me for a moment and then slapped his hand against the bar. "Fair enough," he said. "I'm glad to hear it, because the last thing I need is you mooning at me across the desk."

"Oh my _God, _you narcissist. I respect your work, but that's it. The rest of you does _nothing_ for me." I said this as though I meant it, because I recognized that admitting I found him attractive in any way would only prolong the drama between us. Even though he was, and I did...somewhat. Certainly not enough to outweigh the fact that I also wanted to strangle him with my bare hands.

"Who does, then?"

"Excuse me?"

"Who does 'do it' for you? Come on, tell me: who puts the moon in your June?"

My jaw dropped. What kind of a bizarre and inappropriate question was that? "None of your business," I snapped.

"I know a lot of people. I'm just saying that I might be able to help you out, as a colleague. I like to see people happy. In fact, let me guess. He'd be someone brainy and relevant, but not too obvious, right? Paul Krugman, maybe? Please don't tell me you're one of those news groupies who lusts after guys like Anderson Cooper."

"I'm _not_ having this conversation with you," I seethed, torn between intense indignation and secret horror.

"Oh, God, that was a bull's-eye, wasn't it?" Edward groaned. " You know you've got no shot there, right?"

I closed my eyes and told myself that this was clearly a person who took anything one said as encouragement to continue down a line of questioning. Breathing deeply, I attempted to tamp down the growing desire to clock him and tried to just redirect him instead.

"How are you enjoying being back in the States after spending so many years abroad?" There. That was harmless and threw the focus off of me and onto him, while completely failing to acknowledge the line of questioning which immediately preceded it.

Edward shrugged his shoulders. "Subtle topic shift, eh? Fine. You brought it up, though."

"I did n-" Crap. Had I brought it up? I couldn't remember. I felt slightly drunk, which was physically impossible because I'd only had three sips of Pinot Grigio, and that couldn't have been more than 12% AbV. His mouth twitched slightly, but in no other way did he betray that he was entertained by my confusion.

"Being stateside again is extremely disorienting. I enjoy the coffee. And decent toilet paper."

"Not simultaneously, I hope. Why did you come back?" I'd momentarily forgotten that I wanted to slap him because the subject suddenly held a good deal of interest for me.

"My father asked me to, so I did," was all he said.

"That's...unusual. Do you always do what your father asks you to?" That sounded really rude, but it was out there now and it wasn't as though he hadn't been plenty inappropriate with me.

Edward looked down at the bar before answering. "When I can," he finally responded, quietly. "And when I want to. Not often enough, actually."

"Ah," was all I could manage, not entirely certain how to treat what suddenly seemed like a very personal revelation on his part. "Well."

"Yes. Well."

Fortunately, Peter chose that moment to walk through the doors of the restaurant. Spying us at the bar, he made his way through the well-heeled crowd with a smile on his face.

"Get-to-know-you cocktail, right? That's great. I'm glad to see you two hitting it off." He said this with a hopeful tone in his voice, as though he was uttering an incantation to turn the wish into fact.

"Hi Peter. Yes, Bella got here first and I just joined her a moment or two ago. She tells me she has no interest whatsoever in jumping me, so I think we'll be able to work together without a problem now that we've sorted out that issue." He leaned closer to Peter's ear in the manner of someone about to share a confidence. "To be honest, I think she has a thing for Coop, so it's lucky you didn't go that way after all."

I passed the next moment or two contemplating the potential damage to my career if I just hauled off and decked him in the middle of this swanky eatery. Further dispassionate analysis of the matter showed me that he was merely repeating what I'd admittedly told him myself, which was kind of a weak reason for me to punish him even though I really, really wanted to. Instead, I chose to take a page out of his playbook. What had he given me to work with?

"Peter, great to see you. Edward was just oversharing about his toilet paper fetish and pathological need to please his father. Also, I'm pretty sure he was hiding in the kitchen when I got here, because he's paranoid about the front door for some reason. I'm really enjoying furthering our acquaintance." I leaned into Peter's ear, mirroring Edward's action a moment earlier. "I think you might want to add a clause to his contract about attending regular therapy sessions." Then I offered them both a friendly smile and took another sip of my wine.

Edward laughed out loud, and I raised my eyebrow at him. Peter blinked. Twice. When neither Edward nor I said another word, he cleared his throat and motioned vaguely to the hostess station. "Shall we, then?"

The hostess led us through the cool white dining room to a table overlooking the park. There were two single chairs on one side of the table, and an elegant settee on the other. The hostess motioned me over to the settee, pulling the table slightly away to give me better access. Edward slid onto the other side of the settee like a bullet sliding into the chamber of a gun, the action smooth and, from my perspective, every bit as potentially lethal. Peter took one of the empty chairs opposite us.

Our waiter joined us immediately. He was on the young side for the calibre of restaurant in which we sat, and while he was charming, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other several times as he ran through the seasonal tasting menu and suggested wine pairings. I chose the standard Prix Fixe options instead, as did Edward, while Peter decided to live dangerously and go seasonal.

The waiter disappeared, only to be promptly replaced by another server with a large breadbasket and a set of tongs. He deposited an artisanal roll onto each of the bread plates, and set a small dish of herbed butter in the middle of the table. Edward immediately reached for the roll on my bread plate and began delicately tearing a hole into the side of it, into which he slid a bit of the butter. The sight of his long fingers tearing into the roll, inching past the crust and through to the soft center, momentarily distracted me from the fact that he'd commandeered what was rightfully mine, but I made a quick recover.

"That was my roll," I informed him.

He looked up from his task. "Oh? And based on precisely what evidence are you claiming sole proprietorship of the bread?"

"Based on the fact that it was put on my bread plate. You have your own perfectly-untouched roll on your own bread plate, and now I have none."

"Here, then. Take the other one," he said, reaching across his place setting to hand me his bread plate.

"I'd really have preferred to have the one meant for me, actually," I bickered, slightly startled that I felt the need to make an issue out of this. It was a territorial thing for me now, even though some part of me fully realized that this was possibly the most inane argument I'd ever initiated.

"How do you know this one isn't yours? I don't see that they're marked in any way," Edward laughed.

"I know it was mine because it was sitting on my bread plate. My bread plate, which you are now using."

"Maybe this one is really your bread plate. It's how they set tables in, ah, Morocco?" He pressed his lips together in an attempt to seriously sell his spin on the matter.

"They place bread plates meant for a person at the opposite end of the table in Morocco? Really, Edward? "

"Yes. Or possibly it's Mauritania. That's how they encourage fraternization during meals. You can't be all stiff and awkward with each other when you're reaching across bodies to get to your bread."

"You are seriously deranged," I said, shaking my head. "And I suppose I have no choice but to take your bread now, because you've totally defiled my roll." I broke a piece of the not-my-roll from the end and stuck it in my mouth, largely in an attempt to shut myself up. There was something about Edward Cullen which created a bizarre need in me to argue.

Peter cleared his throat, startling both Edward and myself. To be brutally honest, I'd totally forgotten he was there, but his roll was not a bone of contention.

"Listen," he began. "I know you've both said that you're comfortable working with each other, but there's obviously something going on and I need to sort it out before we go any further and contracts get signed. As much as I like the chemistry I see here, I'm not willing to gamble huge chunks of money on this, let alone expose us to a risk of bad press. This isn't a fucking playground, is what I'm saying. I'm going to ask you one more time - are you going to be okay working as a team, or is this a non-starter?"

Without directly addressing Peter, Edward turned back to me. "Bella, can you tell me anything about our waiter?"

"What? Why?" I wasn't sure whether this was some kind of joke, or test, or just a way for him to avoid Peter's question, and I wasn't sure whether I wanted to assist him at all in any of those things in the first place.

Edward closed his eyes, clearly irritated with me. "Never mind _why_. Just answer the question. Can you tell me anything about our waiter?"

I thought for a moment. "He's younger than I would have expected. Nervous, too, so I'm guessing he's new. He'll be fine once he gets comfortable, but he didn't walk in off the street and get this job. He's probably related to someone with pull around here."

As if he'd divined that I was in the middle of analyzing him, the waiter chose to bring our first course selections to the table at that moment. He slid a masterpiece of sea scallops and caramelized cauliflower in front of Edward, only to be rewarded with an interrogation of sorts.

"May I ask you how long you've been working here?"

The waiter's face fell. "Was there something wrong with the service, sir?"

Edward shook his head. "No, no, everything's fine. I'm just curious."

"This is my second week. But it's my first Saturday dinner service."

"I see," Edward smiled. "And may I ask how you came to get this job? Did you perhaps know somebody here who might have put a good word in for you?"

The waiter flushed to the roots of his hair, earning my instant sympathy as a fellow red-facer. "Edward, knock it off. You're embarrassing him," I hissed. "Sorry - it's kind of a stupid bet, or something," I apologized to the waiter. "It's nothing you're doing wrong, I swear. You're great. Fine. Really. No problem. But answer him, or he'll keep at it and give everyone within earshot a migraine."

"My father's the CFO at Jean Georges Management," he murmured. "But I did work at Mercer Kitchen over the summer."

"You're doing great," I encouraged him. "Pay absolutely no attention to the rude man who steals other people's dinner rolls."

He looked around the table for a moment, and when nobody made a move to detain him, promptly scurried away. I turned to Edward and shook my head at him, but he wasn't looking at me. He was looking right at Peter with one eyebrow raised.

"See? They don't teach that stuff at J-School. That's instinct. She'll work just fine for me," he said.

In what I was beginning to realize would be a pattern between us, I jumped quickly from my primary reaction, which was a feeling of intense flattery, to my second and more powerful reaction, which was indignation. "Work for you? Work _for _you?"

"For. With. Same difference," he shrugged.

"It is _not_ the same thing at all. How do you manage to simultaneously be so respectful and yet so disrespectful?"

Edward leveled those eyes at me once more, all evidence of good humor completely erased. "You have my appreciation. My respect, however, isn't quite as easily won. That you're going to have to earn."

"That's fairly ironic. You have my respect, but I can't think of anyone I appreciate less at this particular point in time," I bit back.

"Okay - time out," Peter said, holding his hand out sideways like a referee and slicing the air between Edward and myself. "Here's what we're going to do. I've got a three-week window before November sweeps start, but since they start mid-week, I want you on the air the last Monday in October. I need to do the set rebuild and ramp up the PR machine for this. And I need to have that happen without the two of you at each other's throats. I don't care if we need to shoot press stills with you back-to-back so you can't spit at each other. I don't mind if you want to foster a bit of an adversarial relationship. You don't have to fart sunshine. But what I absolutely demand from the pair of you is professionalism of the highest order and a total lack of petty squabbling in front of other people. If you can't work something out, you come to me, and my decision is final. This is probably the stupidest thing I've ever done in my entire career, but I have a vision for this program, and the two of you are going to make that vision a reality for me or die trying. Got it?"

"Fine with me," Edward answered, his face betraying nothing but passive acceptance.

"As long as we're clear that I don't work for him in any capacity, on any level, in any sense, then it's fine with me, too," I agreed.

"Edward," Peter addressed him firmly. "Bella does not work for you. She is your co-anchor and she's spent the last five years of her life proving herself in my newsroom. Don't spend your day looking for ways to piss her off." Then Peter turned to me. "Bella, Edward has four Pulitzers on his shelf and is without question one of best reporters on the planet. When we go public with this, every one of my competitors is going to shit themselves with envy, and I like that thought a LOT. So shake hands and quit acting like adolescents. I mean it. Now."

I suddenly didn't want to look directly into Edward's face. I didn't want to see animosity or condescension in his eyes. I wanted to believe that this could work, that he would view me as an equal and a more-than-capable counterweight. I didn't want to doubt myself or my ability, and I didn't want him to give me any reason to be unsure. Instead, I simply held my hand out in his general direction. A few moments later, I felt his hand make contact - firm, strong but not painfully so, the elegant fingers which had recently desecrated my dinner roll wrapping themselves around the back of my hand.

"Let go," he said softly, after a moment.

"You first," I automatically answered, and when I looked up, he was smiling at me. His smile was completely unfair, along with his fingers, and his talent, and his eyes, and the rest of him.

"On the count of three then," I laughed, and we untangled our hands at "three". My palm protested the separation from its new friend, making me wonder how long it had actually been since the last time my skin noticed the lack of any kind of contact.

"Okay? Yes? Let's move on, then," Peter nodded, expelling a large gust of breath and polishing off the last few bites of his fois gras brulee. "We're going to redo Dan's old office space and split it up between the two of you - "

"I want to stay in the bullpen," I argued, at the same time Edward said, "No. The newsroom."

"Did that sound like a question to either one of you? It wasn't. You're taking the office space, and that's final. I know you don't realize this, but trust me - once the floor finds out about your new gig, Bella, they won't be the same around you. I'm not saying they'll resent you or anything - I know how much those guys love you. But you'll need a little distance, and you'll want a little distance. Edward, you probably scare the snot out of them. They'll be all stiff and awkward around you as a best case scenario; in the worst case scenario, they'll start hiding stuff because they'll be afraid you'll get the jump on them. Listen, this won't be an ivory tower situation: Dan's offices are right off the bullpen. You can leave the door open - it's more than he ever did, God knows. I've got a new secretary assigned to help both of you out, and you each have a PA from the intern pool."

"Where are you putting my producer?" Edward asked.

"Your producer? You're bringing your own producer?" I wondered where on earth a print guy had picked up his own producer.

"Don't worry, Edward - we've got an office for her on the opposite side of the floor. She'll be in town on Wednesday, right? I think that's what you said. We haven't been able to reach her at the number you gave me, but with the time difference between here and Saint Petersburg it's not all that surprising. Does she need a driver from the airport? If so, just tell Heidi and she'll set it up."

Since Edward had decided to ignore my question, I posed it to Peter instead. "Edward has his own producer?"

"Well, yes - of course he does. You'll both be working on your own stories in addition to everything else, and since those pieces are likely to be bigger in scope than the hard news, it makes sense to dedicate a producer instead of pulling from general staff."

"Edward, how is it you already have a producer when you've never done any on-camera work?"

He looked at me steadily for a moment before he answered. "I've worked closely with her for years. She was a field producer on assignment for the BBC."

"Bella, you can pick your own producer too, you know. But let me know if you're going to target someone already on staff because I don't want any ugliness going on downstairs."

"I need to think about it," was all I could manage in response. This was all getting a little too lofty for me. The idea of a dedicated producer seemed so elitist, and I knew the guys on the floor were going to give me shit about it.

"Where was I?" Peter wondered aloud as the waiter finished placing our second course choices in front of us. I noted that Edward and I both chose the charred corn ravioli. Was I happy we had a meal choice in common? It seemed as good a place as any to begin to appreciate our similarities, as our differences were already so clearly defined for me.

"Right. So, office space. That's settled. As far as the set's concerned, you need to know that I've got some changes in mind in order to loosen up the feeling a little bit. We'll do part of the broadcast from the desk, as usual, but I also want the two of you up and walking around a little throughout the hour. We're installing a few smartboard screens for mapping and graphics, and you'll be able to interact with those when you need to dig deeper into a piece for information. The tech guys will teach you how to work the boards, but they're pretty simple, really - you can tap to highlight key pieces of information and drag your fingers across the screen to zoom in and out. It's not as schlocky as it sounds, I promise. People spend so much time with their computers these days that they seem to want the visuals presented in what looks like a web interface. I'm also building an interview platform with chairs, so that when you've got someone in-studio, it's less formal than the way we've handled drop-ins in the past. I want lots more of these, by the way. Analysts, politicians, even the odd entertainment personality from time to time."

"Mary, you get all the freaks from tinseltown," Edward grinned. "That'll be right up your alley."

"You can shove the 'Mary' stuff up your own alley, lilypad," I grimaced, wondering just how badly charred corn ravioli would stain what looked like a really nice pair of wool pants. Also, I had no idea why I called him "lilypad", and it was extremely out of character for me to insult someone without knowing exactly how I meant to insult them. Or why.

"Let's leave my alley and anything you want to shove up it out of the conversation for a moment, shall we? I'm sure Peter didn't bring us here to listen to you hit on me all night."

"You're incredible. Seriously, the most insufferable, conceited, arrogant-"

"Enough!" Peter coughed. "Edward, quit egging her on. I really don't have time to babysit you two, so here's what we're going to do. For the next two weeks, I want you to spend lots and lots of time together. Battle it out behind closed doors. Work out some way to get along with each other. Reach an understanding. I'll black out the conference room on fourteen and put armed security on the door if I have to. The two of you take your laptops in there and hunker down for a minimum of eight hours a day. Have lunch together. Talk about the pets you had as kids and who your prom dates were. Argue about existentialism. Spitball story ideas. I don't give a good Goddamn what you talk about, really, as long as you reach the conclusion that you'll need to work together and not against each other."

"We're being...incarcerated? In a conference room? What about the news? I mean, can I keep working my stories?" The thought of being trapped in a room with Edward for hours every day was aggravating in the extreme. The thought of not being where the news was happening was even worse.

"Your job right now is to become a team. We need to do interstitials and bumpers, at least two photo shoots, interviews for web bios, and some trade press. If we fire out the press release on Tuesday, you won't have much time to form your working quotes for the new partnership. We need to hit the ground running, and I'm not having you two keep trying to trip each other. Your assignment between now and Monday is to come up with at least ten things about each other which are positive and which you can spin into quotes for the media."

"But-"

"Ten things, Bella. By Monday morning."

"Lobster," Edward said to the waiter as his third course was placed in front of him. "Thank you. This looks delicious." After he'd taken a bite, he wiped the corner of his secret smile with his napkin and addressed Peter. "Ten things. No problem, boss. Only ten, though, right? Do I get extra credit if I tack on a few more?"

"Sure. You get a gold star and an extra bag of potato chips for lunch," Peter laughed. "That's what I'm talking about. Accentuate the positive."

We made it through the rest of the meal without incident, discussing timelines and finishing up with coffee. My mind was preoccupied with turning over possible reasons for my violent reactions toward Edward. He was a brilliant reporter and a truly gifted writer. His pieces were sympathetic without being maudlin, objective with no loss of humanity. He clearly cared as much about the news as I did, and I suspected that he did so for many of the same reasons. He wanted to do this the right way. We were on the same side. Was I threatened by him? Intimidated by his success and experience in the international arena? Did the fact that he was unarguably a very attractive man factor into the equation at all? The jabs he threw at me were hardly the worst I'd ever seen. I mean, Paul alone was capable of far worse on a slow day when we'd first met, and I never let him get under my skin this way. Why was it so different with Edward?

Peter picked up the tab and Edward insisted on leaving an extra tip for our poor waiter, a gesture which touched me and gave me something else to put on my internal list of positives about him. We walked through the bar area to say our goodbyes at the door.

"It's been interesting," said Peter. "Thank you both. Don't think for a moment I don't realize this tension is due in no small part to the fact that you both care about the job you're about to do. I'm going to try to remember that the next time I want to strangle either one of you - I suggest you do the same the next time you want to strangle each other. See you on Monday."

As he walked out, I raised an eyebrow in Edward's direction. "Feeling braver about the front door, or are you going to cut a hole in the ceiling and have your producer hoist you out that way?"

"The door's fine," he answered. An odd look flashed briefly across his face, only to disappear into a faint but charming smile. "After you, then." As he held the door open for me, I could hear my iPhone chime with a new text message. Immediately concerned that something was up with the guys in Michigan, I fished my phone out of my bag and tapped it to retrieve the message.

My expression must have startled Edward, because a moment later, he was leaning over to ask me if I was all right. I couldn't answer, or even look up at him.

The message was from an unfamiliar number in the 973 area code. It was all in capitals. "HELP ME. ALICE WILL KILL THEM ALL."

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	5. A Friend in Need

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A Friend in Need

"Whoa - steady," Edward cautioned as he gripped my shoulder. I hadn't even realized I'd been listing hard to port. "You should sit down." Without bothering to confirm that this was indeed what I wanted to do, he steered me across the street and to one of the benches which lined the wall enclosing the park. I collapsed onto the bench and dropped my head to my knees, gasping for breath.

"Are you going to vomit?" He asked after a moment. "I mean, it's all right if you are. I just want to be prepared."

The pragmatic tone he took and the words he said were actually infinitely more helpful in restoring my sanity than words of concern or sympathy might have been. "I'm not going to vomit, Edward," I said, sitting up straight and leaning heavily on the backrest of the bench. "I just had a bit of a...shock. That's all. I'll be fine in a minute." I wouldn't be fine in a minute, but I couldn't think of anything else to say. His hand came up and hovered uncertainly near my head before he hesitantly patted me on the back. I worked to regulate my breathing and get it under control so that I could take another look at the message on my phone.

"Bad news?"

"I'm not - I don't - I'm not really sure how to answer that question," I equivocated.

"Well, either the message on your phone makes you really happy, or the message on your phone makes you really upset. From the looks of things, I think it's pretty safe to guess it's not a reminder from your dentist about getting your teeth cleaned. Unless you take that kind of thing much more seriously than the rest of us do."

"Once again, irritating, whether accidentally or intentionally."

"Intentional that time - I'm just trying to distract you on the off-chance you're lying to me about the vomiting," he assured me, in a quasi-apologetic fashion. "Will you show me the message? Or is it too personal?"

"It's just - a really good friend of mine is sick, and her parents won't tell me where she is." I sighed. "She tends to...get a little lost in her own head sometimes."

"Yeah, don't we all," he laughed, scratching the back of his head a little nervously.

"Not like Alice. It's not a joke."

"So, what, you're saying she's in a white room somewhere, taking a trip on the good ship Lollipop?"

I stood up. "You know something? I'm not talking to you about this. You look like a grown-up, but really, you're what Beavis and Butthead might have turned out to be like if their parents had had the scratch to send them to Choate. Good night, Edward."

The roll-defiling fingers of his right hand latched onto my wrist with authority. "Hey, I'm just trying to understand. Try not talking in circles for five minutes and tell me what's going on."

I looked back down at him. "Why? Why would I tell you, and why do you want to know?"

He shook his head at me, and the look in his eye was slightly angry. "I'm a reporter. You've got a story. You should _know_ why, Bella, and if you don't, then maybe I was wrong about you after all."

I had reached the outer limit of my tolerance for tear-downs tonight. Between the mere fact of him and this text from Alice, I couldn't hold it in any more. "You're breathtakingly insensitive. I'm talking about my _best friend_. She's in trouble, and in pain, and I don't know how to help her. Her parents shoved her in a mental hospital somewhere to avoid potential disgrace and scandal at whatever country club they belong to. They won't tell me where. Jesus, not everything is a story, Edward!"

That brought him off the bench to stand facing me. "Listen, Mary, I'm trying to help you. If you think your friend's better off with you wringing your hands and wailing about it, then go ahead - knock yourself out. Are you gonna Nellie Bly your way into wherever they've got her holed up? You gonna ride in like the Rohirrim of Rohan? You need a _plan_. You're good at getting the story, right? This is a story. Forget the personal. Get the story. If you get the story, your friend gets you."

I suddenly noticed that he hadn't let go of my wrist while he was talking. "Let go of me," I seethed. I couldn't decide whether I found it more irritating that he was holding me, or that he was absolutely right and I'd let my emotions cloud my judgment.

"No," he said, holding my wrist more firmly still.

"I swear to God, let me go or I'll-"

Edward moved to stand very, very close to me. I could feel his breath against my forehead, my entire field of vision now occupied by the expanse of his dark blue shirt. I felt cornered and off-balance, and instinctively, I raised my other hand - to push myself away from him, maybe. I wasn't sure.

He grabbed my other wrist as well, trapping it in his free hand. To the casual passerby, it probably appeared as though we were about to dance.

"Or you'll...what, exactly?" His voice was low now, curling like a snake around the words and pushing me even further away from some point I'd been about to make.

"Stop that," I heard myself whisper. What the hell was he doing? What was I doing?

"Show me the message," he murmured.

"No," I echoed his denial from a moment ago, and discovered that my heart was racing uncomfortably in my chest. I didn't feel threatened in the least. I felt - I don't know what I felt. I had no word for this in my vocabulary. It was some strange new hybrid of angerlust.

"Show me the message, Mary," he repeated in that soft voice, but it was still a command and not a question.

"Don't call me Mary."

He laughed quietly. "I'll call you Mary until you stop acting like a Mary, and then I'll call you something else, most likely. Show me the message."

The part of me which was still on speaking terms with Reason piped up to let me know I probably wanted to do something about the fact that this man was playing me like a Steinway grand. Calling on some long-forgotten instinct, I forced myself to lean into him so that we were closer still, and chuckled to myself when I heard his sharp intake of breath.

"Okay, Edward," I sighed in the general direction of the neck directly above me. We were close enough now so that I could note with satisfaction that our hearts were in a horse race. "I'll show you the message."

And then I lifted my right foot and stomped on his toes, causing him to release me and fly backwards with several rapid curses. "But don't call me Mary," I finished.

"Jesus_fuck_, I think you broke my foot," he swore, hopping up and down in obvious pain. Then he laugh-groaned and shook his head. "I probably had it coming, though. Point taken, _Bella_. Nice. Let's see that message."

Relieved beyond words that the unsettling tension had broken, I reached back down to the bench and grabbed my phone, unlocking the screen to show him the text message. He raised his eyebrows as he read it.

"Well, that's fairly dramatic, isn't it. I take it your friend's name is Alice, then?" I nodded as looked up at me. "How long has it been since the two of you last spoke?"

"I'm trying to remember," I said, cursing myself for being so careless with her. "She had a big project she was working on - an art installation at a building down near Wall Street. Not her usual thing, which is why she was so keyed up about it. She makes her living as a window dresser - Bloomingdale's, Saks, Barney's - you know. This was a favor for a friend of hers. We had brunch about three weeks ago at Cafe Luxembourg. I remember we walked back to the East Side through the park so she could catch a cab downtown on Fifth, and the leaves hadn't started to turn yet."

He sat back down on the bench and took off his shoe to rub his foot, grimacing. "Christ, that hurt. Are you wearing cleats? She was fine when you saw her though, right?"

Ignoring his first question, I joined him on the bench, placing a safe distance between us. This was either for his sake, or mine. "She was hyper, but that's pretty much her constant state of being, so I saw nothing unusual. She was happy. Honestly, she's almost always happy. Up with the sun, singing in the kitchen - the kind of happy that makes you want to hide under your pillow, only with her, it's somehow just really sweet."

"I get it. Was she - I mean, is this the first time she...?" He let the question ask itself, as though he didn't want to put a label on her illness again for fear that I'd hobble his other foot as well.

"No. Twice before. Once when we were thirteen, and then again in college - sophomore year. The first time, her pediatrician told her folks it was probably hormonal. They sedated her and she missed about two weeks of school. She went out of state for college - Rhode Island School of Design - and I stayed here. I got the call from her roommate and drove up there in the middle of the night to see if I could help, but her parents got there about a half-hour after I showed up and just took over. She missed the rest of the semester that time."

"What happens? You know, when she, uh, gets lost in her head?" He fixed his eyes on mine, refusing to let me out of the stare. He must have sensed that I wouldn't give this information up without a fight, so he simply bided his time and waited for me to surrender. And I suddenly discovered that I wanted to, not because it was him, but because the burden of knowing this about someone and not being able to share it was tremendous.

"Alice...sees things. She has these dreams, and the dreams seem real to her. Very real. It's usually good stuff - you know, people meeting, someone getting pregnant, someone getting a new job or a new pet or whatever. But every now and then, she has a bad dream. And if it's a very bad dream, she gets stuck there and can't find her way back out. That's not the worst part."

I stopped talking. How could I say this? He'd think I was crazy too. I didn't know this man. We were about to work together in the biggest job in the news game. He'd already made it clear that he had his doubts about my ability. Did I really want him to doubt my sanity as well?

"Say it. Whatever it is, just say it. Get it out there."

"The worst part is - she's always right. Always," I whispered. _Oh, Alice, it's not a betrayal_, I silently pleaded with her to understand. _You wouldn't hurt anyone. I know you, and you wouldn't._

He didn't say anything for several long minutes. The silence pressed down on me, making me doubt myself and deeply regret offering up the truth to him. Why had I done that? Could I somehow backtrack now and make a joke out of it? I couldn't joke about Alice. There was nothing at all humorous to me in the way my friend was tormented by the things she saw. If he could help me find an answer and help her, I'd willingly let him humiliate me every day for the rest of eternity, on air, in front of the universe.

"What happened the last two times? Assuming you can tell me," he finally said.

"You're taking this seriously?"

Edward shrugged. "Listen, I've been around the world. I've seen a lot of strange things I wouldn't even begin to know how to describe. If you're asking me whether or not I believe it's possible for a person to predict the future through dreams, my answer is 'no'. But I'm also smart enough to know that I don't know everything. You've got a friend. She's got a problem. I'm less concerned with what that problem is than I am with the fact that it's clearly got you all twisted up."

"Holy crap," I breathed.

"What?"

"That was actually a really decent thing for you to say." It took my breath away and made me slightly angry to confess it, but it was true.

Edward laughed, then shook his head and adopted a slightly annoyed tone. "All right, all right, don't get all sappy and soft on me. What happened - the last two times?"

"The first time, she had a dream that her next-door neighbor got into a horrible car accident. Her father found her vandalising the neighbor's car the next morning. Alice had no idea what she was doing - it's not as though she was ever a grease monkey. She took a pair of garden shears to a bunch of the hoses and wires she found under the hood and caused a LOT of damage. The doctor said it was hormonal, they doped her up on Haldol, and she was totally out of it for two weeks."

"What happened to the neighbor? "

I paused for a moment. This was going to sound really strange, but given what I already confessed to him, I couldn't see why it would rank as any weirder. "Obviously, her car was undrivable. She worked in Port Angeles, about an hour away from where we lived. One of her friends gave her a lift to work while the car was in the shop. Everything was fine for about a week and a half, and then - that second Thursday, they were run off the road by a logging truck. Driver fell asleep at the wheel. The neighbor was pretty banged up, and her friend lost her left leg below the knee. We never told Alice about the neighbor's friend."

Edward nodded, but didn't say anything. Instead, he gestured that I should keep going, and I assumed he meant I should tell him about the second incident.

"The second time, in college, Alice had a dream that one of the students on her dorm floor committed suicide. She ran up and down the halls beating the the doors and screaming at the top of her lungs like the place was on fire, freaking everyone out. Her roommate grabbed Alice's cell phone and I was the first name on her favorites list, so she randomly dialed me. I tore up to Rhode Island and got there at about three in the morning. Campus police had Alice locked in a room off the dorm lobby. They had her - she was _restrained_ with tie wraps on her wrists and ankles. I was arguing with the guards when her parents drove up. After that, they shut me out of the conversation. Her roommate and I just watched as they took her away."

"And the suicide? Did that happen?"

I nodded. "I did some digging around. One of the girls on her floor dropped out of school at the end of the semester and killed herself over the summer. I didn't think Alice knew about it until she mentioned something several years after we graduated. She hadn't seen who it was in her dream, which was why she freaked out at the whole floor."

I exhaled loudly, suddenly exhausted, and I realized that I was pretty cold. I wrapped my arms around my shoulders and rubbed them briskly, standing up to get away from the confidences I'd shared.

"Anyway, that's what happened. So yes, when Alice has a bad dream, I get nervous. And this message - it makes me scared that she's going to hurt herself."

Edward stood up again, wincing as he placed pressure on the foot I'd assaulted. "Does she always refer to herself in the third person?"

"No, that's new. I don't recognize the number, either, but if there's one thing that can fairly be said about Alice, it's that she's resourceful. She'd have made an excellent thief."

I looked over at him and found him watching me carefully, the eyes never ceasing their constant analysis. "Oh my God. Why the hell am I telling you all of this?" I put my hand on my forehead, shocked at myself. I was _never_ this unguarded with anyone. I doubted the guys in the bullpen even knew I had a friend named Alice, and they'd known me for years.

Edward's lips curved up at the corners in a not-entirely-innocent grin. "Think I got where I am by accident? Sweetheart, people tell me things all the time. Because they want to, and they need to. People need to talk. All you have to do is listen, and sooner or later, everyone talks. Everyone. Even a hard case like you."

"Why did you tell Peter you wanted me to be your co-anchor?" I asked the question again, needing to know the answer now more than I ever had before.

His smile grew exponentially. "Ah. You see, sweetheart, when I say that everyone talks, I mean that everyone talks...except me."

"We're abandoning 'Mary' in favor of 'sweetheart'?"

"For the moment."

I set my mouth into a tight line. "It's equally insulting. I don't like it any better than Mary, just so you know."

There was another brief flash of something odd in those cool eyes of his. "I didn't really expect you would, to be honest."

"I'm leaving now." If I wasn't going to get an answer to my question, the next best thing I could do was vacate the premises before I handed over any more of myself to fill the vacuum. I grabbed my bag from the bench and turned to go.

"I don't think you are, though. _Sweetheart_."

"Don't think I'm what? Leaving? Watch me."

He put his hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out my iPhone, wiggling it around in his fingers. "Okay then. Let me know when you start missing this."

I reached out to grab it away from him, and he held it high above his head, laughing. "Not so fast. You have two choices: either climb up here and try to convince me to give it back to you, or promise you won't do something rash. You need a plan, Bella. Rohirrim of Rohan and Nellie Bly aren't plans. Let me help you."

Oh, I wanted to hit him. I also wanted to hit myself for not noticing that he'd pocketed my phone while I was spilling my guts. Since meeting Edward Cullen yesterday afternoon, I seemed to have developed this hitherto-unexposed violent streak. He made me so unreasonably angry that I couldn't think straight, and even though I realized he probably did this on purpose, it didn't take the edge off of that frustration. And he was offering his help. I wanted to hit a man who was offering me his help. Was I desperate enough about Alice to accept it?

He stood there with his arm above his head, watching me work through my options. The smile vanished from his face and he grew serious. "Please. I know you'd rather chew your own arm off than let someone else help you, but I'm asking you as nicely as I possibly can. Please. Let me help you."

"I can never tell if you're being serious or if you're just trying to make me feel like an idiot," I said before I could stop myself. Holy shit, it was some kind of disease, or mind control, or something he did. I needed to learn this trick.

Edward lowered his arm and held my phone out to me. "I'm not trying to make you feel like an idiot. I'm being completely serious. I don't want you rushing out to find your friend when you're obviously more concerned about her than you are about yourself. You can't be a good reporter if you're too caught up in the story, and you are. Both. A good reporter, and too caught up in the story. Trust me when I tell you that I recognize the signs."

I took the phone from his outstretched hand. "You know, the speed at which you shift from complete jackass to concerned citizen is giving me whiplash. Pick one and stick with it, for both our sakes."

An unexpectedly rueful smile was his response. "Honestly, I'm probably more consistently a jackass at this point in my life. But I'll see what I can do. If it's any consolation to you, you've seen more of the concerned citizen in me than anyone else has for a very long time."

"Wow. That's pretty frightening, actually."

The grin returned in full force then, momentarily knocking me sideways. "Heh. Funny. Let's go."

"Wait - go where? _We_ aren't going anywhere that I know of."

"Sure we are," he said. "You're going to show me the newsroom, and we're going to find out who that cell phone number belongs to." He stepped out into the parking lane of the street and hailed a cab.

The fourteenth floor was quiet when we arrived. Saturday night was unquestionably the slowest night on the floor, with only two incredibly bored evening staffers hunched over their keyboards, probably playing Minesweeper or Facebook-stalking their high school crushes. I led Edward over to my space and powered on the desktop. A cell-phone lookup yielded the name "G. McGraw" of Little Falls, New Jersey as the last-listed owner of the number.

"Ring any bells?" Edward asked me. I shook my head. We cross-referenced the location against the list of likely private institutions I'd compiled the day before and came up with two possibilities within easy commuting distance of G. McGraw's address. I wanted to call the number, but Edward insisted we do a bit of back-checking first to see what we could find out before we committed to the call.

After an hour of Googling our way through various searches on the name, I yawned loudly and slumped back into my chair. It was eleven o'clock and I was more tired than I could remember being in quite some time.

"I'm done," I admitted, rubbing my eyes with my knuckles and stretching my arms up in the air.

"Fine. Let's just prank the number quickly before we wrap up here," Edward said.

"Prank the number? What are we, twelve?"

"It'll show up as a trunk line from the building if they bother to check into it, and they'll probably dismiss it as a misdialed number. I'm all for the element of surprise - aren't you?"

Nodding wearily, I took it a step further and suggested we use one of the fax lines on the floor, experience having shown me that people ran from investigating anything involving that annoying "beep-crackle-beep" sound.

"Do you want to dial, or do you want me to take it? I should do it," Edward decided. He picked up the receiver on the fax machine and I hit the speakerphone button as a compromise. The phone rang twice before the call went to voicemail.

_"Hey, it's Garrett. Can't take your call right now, so leave a message and I'll call back as soon as I can."_

I hit the "End" button on the fax machine before the voicemail prompt could beep, disconnecting us from the line.

"Garrett McGraw, then. The message is too casual for him to be using this number on any kind of professional or work-related basis," I yawned again, and Edward nodded.

"Agreed. We'll figure it out tomorrow. Get some sleep."

"Tomorrow's Sunday, Edward," I mumbled as I picked up my bag and grabbed my jacket from the back of my chair.

"And?"

"And we're not going to get anywhere with this tomorrow. I need to rest. And I need to think."

He tapped his fingers against the top of my computer monitor and arched an eyebrow at me. "No chance you're considering the Nellie Bly thing, right?"

I blinked at him. "Uh, no." I mostly wasn't.

"I'm serious, Bella. Don't. I have half a mind to lock you in the conference room a day early."

"You know, I've managed to survive for twenty-eight years without your supervision, Edward. I'm not a child. I'm also not exactly new to the concept of investigative journalism. It's not that I don't appreciate your help, because I do. But you need to stop treating me as though I'm some doe-eyed innocent, because I'm not."

That made him smile. "Oh, you're doe-eyed, all right, even if you don't think you are. Wait - stop - I meant that in a good way, I swear. It's deceptive, and it works for you. Just promise me you won't give in to the temptation to barrel through the front doors of random mental hospitals in Northern New Jersey without a plan. We'll find her."

I didn't immediately answer him. I wasn't sure how deeply I wanted him involved in something so personal to me.

"Bella. Don't. If you think I'm annoying now, you should see what happens when I really make an effort. I'm trying for some team spirit, here. Please do me a favor and reciprocate."

The word "reciprocate", coming from him, send an odd tingle down my spine. I shivered it away and straightened my back. "Fine. I won't do anything until we've talked it through, okay?"

"Promise me," he repeated, and again, it wasn't a question, but a command.

"I promise. Why do you care?"

He pursed his lips for a moment before responding. "It'd be a major hassle for me to have to irritate someone new all over again. You're already in the middle of the process. And I'm lazy."

I snorted at him. "Have it your way. Don't tell me. I'm too tired to fight about it now anyway. Here - put your number in my phone - and then GIVE IT BACK TO ME." He punched the information into my contact list, then dialed his own number to record my information on his cell.

"I'm going home now," I yawned again, taking my phone from him once more and storing it in the bag on my shoulder. We rode the elevator down to the lobby in silence and walked through the front door onto the street.

"I'm trusting you to keep your promise. I don't trust a lot of people, so that's kind of a big deal for me," Edward announced.

"I don't promise things lightly," I answered. "Or often. So don't get used to it."

"All right," he said, staring down at me.

"All right, then. Goodnight, Edward." I don't know why, but it seemed as though I should shake his hand in order to end our evening, so I did. It was weirdly formal after everything I'd told him, but we certainly weren't at a comfortable enough point in our assocation for me to just casually wave him off for the night.

He took my hand but instead of shaking it, he just sort of held onto it , turning our arms into the suspension bridge of a temporary cease-fire. "You promised, and I trusted you. Remember that," he repeated. "Goodnight."

I rolled my eyes but nodded my head to let him know that I got the message, then walked out into the parking lane to flag down a cab. I opened the door and turned around to find him still standing there with a lopsided, slightly evil grin on his face. Right before I closed the door, I heard him say, "Sweetheart."

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	6. Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

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Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Five.

I'd been staring at my laptop screen for what felt like hours now, and the most I'd been able to come up with were five good things to say about Edward. The list read as follows:

1. Edward has fantastic instincts for a story.

2. Edward reports the news in a fair way which simultaneously doesn't detract from the humanity involved.

3. Edward has thrown himself into the middle of the worst situations on earth in order to bring to light the pain and suffering of others who have no voice of their own.

4. Edward is genuinely interested in people - he asks questions and compels the truth.

5. Edward believes in the news and supports that belief with action.

The things on the list seemed on-point and complimentary. They also didn't even begin to capture what it was like to have the man set his sights on you and dig in until he got what he came for. Would it be bad if I mentioned that he's manipulative and will stop at nothing in order to ferret out a subject's most secret thoughts? Should I say that he had a way of looking at you which made you feel as though your brain was naked and panting for him? And what about how he sat in front of you, patiently waiting for you to talk and fill the space between you with your truth, whether you wanted to or not?

Should I mention the hair? It was just there, making him look as though he couldn't have cared less, and even that was sort of suspect to me. The hair said "Hey, I'm just hanging around killing some time. What we're up to here isn't important. I'm not on the clock. I'm casual. You just talk, and it'll stay right here between us. No deadlines. No agenda. Just Edward and his hair, not really paying close attention to anything you might want to share with us." The hair lied through its teeth. If it was being honest, it would be a buzz cut.

I soldiered on, and within the next half-hour, I'd managed to list another five things I thought I might be able to say about him with a straight face.

6. Edward is tenacious, and digs in until he discovers what's hidden.

7. Edward is careful with language, and uses it with precision to craft a complete picture with words.

8. Edward's experience in the field offers him a global perspective on issues which might sometimes be difficult for those of us here in the States to achieve.

9. Edward doesn't waste time. He goes after a story full speed ahead.

10. Edward doesn't distance himself from the news. He is right in the middle of it, up to his elbows.

These things sounded slightly silly to me once I'd written them down, but I was unwilling to spend the remainder of the day torturing myself about the list. I just wanted it done with. I was also really pretty sick of typing his name out over and over again, and thinking about him, and viewing him in a favorable light.

The list wasn't the only reminder of Edward that I'd had all day. No fewer than three times had my cell phone barked at me since I'd woken up, and each time I picked up the call, I was greeted by the annoying tones of a fax line trying to connect. "Clever little shit," I muttered to myself. I assumed that this was his way of reminding me that I'd made him a promise yesterday, and while the method he chose to convey that reminder was obnoxious, it also forced me to admire the breathtaking roundness of the sense of humor involved. He was serving me a spoonful of my own medicine.

My phone rang again. After a brief debate with myself, I decided that the most effective payback I could render would be to not call him at all. I reasoned that keeping him in the dark was the fastest route to driving him crazy, because I recognized in him the same hunger to _know_ that I struggled with on a daily basis. In any event, I had no new information to share. Garrett McGraw didn't appear to have much of an online presence. Endless and convoluted Google searches on the name yielded no pictures or links to anything even remotely useful. Exhausted and more than a little nervous about what fresh horror the coming day would bring, I shredded a bag of dry cleaning, found a respectable outfit for the photo shoot, ignored yet another phone call from him, and crawled into bed at an insanely early hour.

Any hope I might have entertained about the possibility that the forced captivity Peter mentioned had been a joke was promptly dashed when I arrived in the bullpen at eight the following morning. The view of my desk was blocked by the massive form of Marcus, one of the building security guards. He swiveled the head which rested on top of his enormous Maori body in my direction and grinned at me. "Nah, Miss Bella, don't think about getting comfortable here, now. You know I gotta walk you down the hall." He gently removed my messenger bag from my shoulder and hoisted it upon his own, holding a hand out to me in a gesture which clearly meant I needed to step in front of him and lead the way to the conference room.

Grumbling and ignoring the curious stares from the guys in the pen, I trudged down the hallway. Of course, Edward was already in the conference room, pecking away at his laptop. He had a pair of rimless glasses perched at the edge of his nose, where they were hanging on for dear life due to the ruler-straight nature of his facial structure.

"Hey," he looked up as I entered. "Good morning. I'm just updating my Facebook status to read 'Incarcerated'."

I snorted at him and took a seat at the opposite end of the table. Marcus placed my messenger bag in front of me and then turned to leave. "I'll be right outside if you need anything," he smiled genially, letting us both know that the eyes of God were watching us. Then he shut the door and left us to our misery.

"This is just fantastic - it's like Abu Ghraib. With pastries," I muttered, grabbing a croissant from the plate on the table and popping open my laptop to power it up.

We worked in silence for a while, but the silence felt forced and unnatural in light of the confidences I'd shared on Saturday night. Edward must have felt this as well, because after a few moments, he murmured, "So...visit any good mental institutions lately?"

I peered over my vertical screen to shoot him a look. "I said I wouldn't, and I didn't. Oh - thanks for the fax calls. All five of them. You really know how to annoy a girl."

That made him smile. "You'll never prove it was me, sweetheart. Although it might interest you to know that there's a really convenient Kinko's right next to the coffee place across the street from my building." Then he paused for a beat before adding, "Thank you for keeping your promise."

"Yeah, well, " I answered, not entirely sure what I was hoping to accomplish with those words. I waved my hand in the air to punctuate the vague and unfinished response.

We settled in to read emails and scan news feeds. An hour and a half later, Peter executed a perfunctory knock-and-enter, his face bright with hope and nervous tension. "Hi, hi, good morning," he blustered. "How's it going in here? Any blood on the carpet yet? No? Great. Listen, we need to do your headshots and team shots today to prep for the release tomorrow. I'm having our guy bring the backdrop and his set-up to you at noon. Oh - speaking of - where are my lists?"

Edward handed him a piece of yellow legal paper, and I handed over the list I'd printed out before going to sleep last night. Peter took them both in his hands and held them side by side to compare them. As his eyes scanned from left to right, a grin slowly spread over his face and he had himself a private little laugh.

"Something funny?" I asked.

Peter just shook his head and kept right on smiling. "Not really. It's just - the lists are really pretty similar. Almost identical, in fact. _Almost_." And then he looked at Edward. "Don't use that last one."

Edward grinned back at him. "Wasn't planning on it," he answered. "That's why I have eleven things on the list."

"Is anyone going to fill me in, or do I just get to assume that Edward's setting himself up for a visit from the sensitivity trainers in Human Resources?"

Peter shook his head. "I think I'm going to let Edward take this one. Oh - hey, Edward, the stylist is coming down to meet with you at eleven."

"I'm pretty sure I can dress myself, Peter," Edward responded with a smile, but now the smile had a bit of a corner to it.

"Let it go. Listen to her - she's just going to talk ties and whatnot with you. Bella's already been sorted on this stuff, and you've never been on camera so you can't imagine how important details like colors and stripes are to the people in the control room. Also..."

Edward's corner got a little sharper at the pause. "Also? What?"

Peter squinted at him. "Uhm, your hair. We're going to need to tone it down a little."

"What do you mean, 'tone it down'? I'm not having news hair, Peter. No way. Forget it."

It was my turn to grin, and God, was I happy about that. Honest hair would be an interesting look for him. One less shifty element to work around.

"No, I'm not talking about a side-part helmet," Peter assured him. "We just need to, uh, trim it back a bit. Your hair's a little MTV at the moment."

To my surprise, Edward merely shrugged at that. "Fine. You can shave it off for all I care. As long as we're clear that I'm not having news hair, it's fine with me."

I had thought he'd put up more of a fight over the issue, but he was clearly unconcerned once he had assurance that he wasn't going to walk away with anything incredibly organized going on up there. And then I was shocked to realize that I would miss the casually-disordered tangle. It sat atop his head like a ravished angel on a Christmas tree, slightly wild and a little dangerous and anything but predictable. I wasn't sure why that appealed to me, because as a general rule, I liked being able to decide things about people. Edward was impossible for me to decide.

"But I like your hair," I blurted, then immediately wanted to die. Really die.

Edward turned to look at me, the confusion and shock on his face gradually slipping into genuine amusement. "Well, I like your hair too, but to be honest, I think that what's going on underneath it is infinitely more interesting."

Peter cleared his throat. "Okay. That was...weird. Anyway, around ten o'clock for the haircut. I'll swing by again when we're ready for the shots." He walked toward the door and grabbed the handle to open it, but turned back to us before he crossed the threshold. "Stay put," he ordered us. "I mean it." He raised the index and middle fingers of his right hand in a vee and pointed them from his eyes back to us. Then he was gone.

I had no idea how to move past the fact that I'd randomly voiced my appreciation for Edward's hair. I also had no idea why I was so embarrassed about that appreciation, but if pressed, I'm pretty sure I'd put it down to the fact that the "underwear model" thing still hung suspended between the two of us, and I honestly, truly didn't like him thinking that I was in any way starry-eyed over his fairly obvious physical attractiveness. I wasn't. At all.

_Oh, my God. This was very, very bad._

"What was the last item on your list?" I snapped at him. Deflection is the better part of concealing mortification.

Edward grinned a little wolfishly, running his tongue against his lower teeth and raising his eyebrows at me. "You really want to know? You sure?"

"Positive. I need to figure out how big a harassment suit I can bring against you."

His lips closed, pressing against each other tightly to control his entertainment. "Okay. I said you had really nice hair."

"I hate you," I snarled, and then inexplicably collapsed into a fit of laughter.

"I know," he smiled back. Then he reached into his bag and grabbed what looked like a palm-sized green Nerf ball. "Heads up," he warned, and tossed me the ball. Uncharacteristically, I managed to catch it using both of my hands.

"What's this for? I can't possibly hurt you with it, so what good is it going to do me?"

"It's my thinking ball. Quiet," he cautioned me before I had a chance to open my mouth. "Peter wanted us to spitball story ideas, so let's do that. You toss, I catch and send up an idea. Then I toss it back to you, you theoretically catch and send up an idea, and so on."

"Excellent. Are we going to do trust exercises next?"

"Listen, sweetheart. We're stuck here. Well, until we come up with a plan to break ourselves out, anyway. Might as well make use of the time."

Shrugging, I tossed the ball back to him, and of course it sailed three feet over his head and crashed into the video screen at the far end of the conference room. "Uh, sorry," I muttered, embarrassed. "Not really much of an athlete."

Edward huffed and stood up to retrieve the ball, treating me to a distracting view of his backside. "Yeah, motion carried on that point. Okay, let's see: on the homefront, how about a series on how the new health care legislation will affect the uninsured?"

I rolled my eyes. "Boring. Give it," I motioned to him, and he tossed the ball back to me. It hit me squarely in the face because he was a far better shot than I could ever hope to be. "I'm going to pretend that was accidental. How about the health care legislation and how it'll be hopelessly compromised if it's ever actually passed?"

"You're such a pessimist. How about the health care legislation and what's influencing the decisions behind it?"

I considered that for a moment, opting to roll the ball back across the table to him instead of lobbing it and shaming myself. "More interesting. You want congress or the lobbyists? I want the lobbyists," I decided.

He laughed. "I guess that leaves me with congress, then. Thanks."

"Hey, new guy. You might be a big deal elsewhere in the world, but around here, you need to get your feet wet in the halls of the Capitol just like everybody else does." I finally felt superior about something. I had several dozen direct dials to key senators and never needed to go through PR channels in order to get to a source on the Hill.

Edward didn't say a word. Instead, he picked up his cell phone and punched in a number. "Nancy? Hi, it's - thanks, great. Yourself? Did I catch you at a bad time? No - no problem at all. After lunch is great. Yes, at this number. Just a quick question - more direction than anything else. Off the record, of course," he laughed. "I'll tell him you said so. Thanks again," Edward smiled, and ended the call.

"Pelosi?"

He nodded, a big, smirking ball of smug.

I cocked an eyebrow at him. "Hand over your phone," I demanded.

The look on his face told me everything I needed to know. He eyed me speculatively for a moment, as if debating whether or not to continue the charade, and then finally threw his hands up in surrender. "What gave me away?"

"The House convened at ten this morning. I know this because I actually bother to check the congressional calendar every day - it's a habit you might want to consider adopting."

"Well, good for you, you little Girl Scout. I'd rather fly by the seat of my pants."

"Edward, the seat of your pants is going to have a lot of boot marks on it if you try to grin and charm your way through the Washington power structure. But hey, they're your pants, so get down, get funky."

He put his hands behind his head. "Oh, I don't know, sweetheart. You'd be amazed at how charming I can be."

I looked back down at my computer screen. "You know what, Edward? You were right. Nellie Bly isn't a plan. But neither is cocky."

"You do your job your way, and I'll do my job my way," he returned, then eyed me speculatively. "I'll bet you're one of those research types, right? One of those annoyingly studious types who pour over every boring detail before you actually make a move on a story?"

I glared at him over my laptop screen. "Are you asking me if I like to know what I'm walking into? The answer is 'yes'. I look into a story and map a course of action. The fewer surprises I'm handed once I'm in the thing, the better for me, and usually for the subject as well."

"See, that's your problem, right there. The surprises are where the best stuff usually comes from," Edward laughed. "I make a plan, but I love the detours. Your problem is that the detours scare you."

"I don't have a problem. And I'm not scared of detours," I shot back. "What I don't like are dead ends."

"Dead ends just mean you need to get out a shovel and start digging a tunnel."

Our debate was interrupted by a knock on the conference room door. Two seconds later, I had the pleasure of watching Edward be assaulted by a fairly fey hairstylist, who announced that Demetri was here to make hair magic. He spread out a drop cloth on the floor, rolled a chair over it, and motioned to Edward that he needed to sit and submit. Edward shrugged again and did as he was told, dragging his laptop with him.

"No. Absolutely not. You cannot look down while I work," Demitri the hair guru ordered, slinging a cape around Edward's neck and fastening the velcro tab at his nape.

"Listen, Pan of the Woods - I'm a moving target," Edward groused. "Do whatever it is you need to do up there, but don't expect me to stop living while you're doing it."

"You are a beautiful man, but I would not have you. So difficult," Demitiri complained, setting to work with a pair of shears. I watched with no small amount of dismay as snippets of hair began to cover the drop cloth.

"I'm devastated. No side part. No center part. Don't make it too neat."

"Ssh, sssh," Demitri cooed, apparently in the belief that Edward was somehow traumatized by the prospect of losing any length on his locks. I'd certainly seen enough salon meltdowns to understand why Demitri might anticipate that reaction, but his canvas was quite clearly over the issue and was instead focused on fighting to keep his head at an angle which would allow Demitri to do what he was doing while at the same time permitting Edward to type on his keyboard.

When Demitri was done, he held a mirror up to Edward so that he could check the result for himself. Edward ignored the mirror and didn't look up, instead waving his hand in my direction. "If it's okay with her, it's okay with me," he said.

"Why would I - Edward, it's your hair, not mine. I'm not going to be responsible for deciding whether or not you like it," I spluttered.

He looked up at that and arched an eyebrow in my direction. "You seemed pretty invested in the state of my hair. Certainly more invested than I am. If it doesn't look like crap, tell him so and let's move on."

"It doesn't look like crap," I announced. In fact, the shorter hair made him look younger and more carefree, which I found odd, as generally those would be traits I'd associate with longer, less-kempt hair. The new haircut was apparently going to be just as deceptive as the old one.

Demitri was clearly anxious for higher praise than that, but he was destined for disappointment, because there was no way in hell that I was going to tell him that he'd managed to take an extraordinary thing and make it impossibly better. Huffing in the exasperated tone of an underappreciated artiste, he rudely slapped at Edward's shoulder, making him rise from the chair so that he could gather the drop cloth and remove the cape. "You do not deserve this hair," he complained. "It is a bitterness to me that I have given it to you."

"Sorry about that," Edward said, in the least apologetic tone I'd ever heard anyone use. Demitri muttered to himself as he collected his things and stormed out of the room, knocking into the wardrobe stylist as she attempted to swerve out of his way and not drop the garment bags slung over her arm.

"Oh, for the love of Christ," Edward groaned as he saw her approaching him. "Listen, can you just leave whatever it is you want me to wear on the chair over there? I don't have time to play dress-up for you."

The girl was understandably cowed. "I have to - I'm sorry, but I really have to do this," she stammered. "It's my job."

"Well, it's my nightmare, so make it a short one. Please," he added as an afterthought.

She studied him for a moment before murmuring, "Fall. Definitely a Fall. We'll go with teals, khakis, and olives to start."

I snorted, unable to contain myself. "You're a Fall, Edward."

He grimaced at me. "Keep it up, sweetheart, and we'll see who falls."

The girl stood nervously in front of Edward. "Uh, I need you to - can you please stand up for a minute? I have to, uh, measure..."

"Ugh - fine." He rose from his chair, disgusted, laptop in hand. "Go. Do your worst."

She unrolled her measuring tape and started whipping it around his body, taking rapid notes as she went. Edward had to shift his laptop from one hand to the other while she noted his sleeve length. "The slate wool two-button," she decided, then hesitatingly asked him whether the size she'd brought was the size he generally wore. He nodded, still not looking at her. "Of course I'll have to hem the trousers, but not by much."

"Well, thank God for small miracles. Are we done?"

She nodded, putting away her tape measure and picking up her garment bags. "I'll have this back to you in twenty minutes."

"You are free to imagine just how happy that makes me," Edward drawled sarcastically, but when he caught sight of the way in which the girl's face fell, he quickly backtracked. "Don't pay any attention to me. Thanks for, ah, doing this stuff." And then he broke out the big smile, the charming one which could strip the paint from a house at twenty paces. The girl instantly returned his smile, blushing and thanking him for his time. She scooted out the door.

"You don't have a single scruple, do you?" I marveled at him.

Grinning at me, he shook his head. "Not one. I like to travel light."

Peter strolled into the conference room again shortly before noon, waving two manila folders in our direction. "Contracts, back from the lawyers, so you know they're all, uh, legal." He placed one of the folders on top of my keyboard. "Sign and initial wherever you see an arrow sticky," he said.

I opened the folder and pretended to read through the contract again, but my eyes had shifted up to see what Edward was doing. He held his manila folder open as well, and his eyes were on mine. "Well?" he challenged after a moment. "Ladies first."

His eyes dared me to grab a pen, so I did, scrawling my name wherever I saw a yellow tab. It felt a little like the suicide of my serenity, but there was absolutely no way I was going to back out now. I wanted this too much, and the unsettling nature of his involvement wasn't going to be enough to deter me from the goal. As he watched me begin to scratch my name on the pages, he promptly picked up his own pen and started to mark the contract in front of him. Less than a minute later, we were done.

"Congratulations," Peter beamed, collecting the contracts from us and placing them both into one folder. "We're going to have a great time with this. That isn't a hyperbolic statement - I mean, you're going to make sure that we have a great time with this. Don's right outside with the camera stuff. Look newsy."

Peter walked back over to the door to let Don in. Edward raised his cup of coffee in my direction. "To new partnerships," he toasted.

"To news partnerships," I corrected, lifting my own cup and taking a sip.

The wardrobe stylist returned with Edward's suit while Don was setting up. "Hey, Peter - unless you want me to give Bella here a free show, it'd probably be best if I ducked out to the men's room to change into this," Edward grinned.

"I could use a walk myself," I added, longing for the relative freedom of the hallway and a break from his constant presence. With any luck, I could signal Paul to join me. I needed something familiar, and I needed to know what was going on in Michigan. Newton hadn't called all morning, which was either a good thing or a bad thing.

Peter considered the matter. "One at a time," he finally decided, clearly not trusting us. "Marcus will escort you. Bella first, so she's not tempted to...wander around."

Annoyed, I surreptitiously grabbed my phone and made my way to the door, scowling up at Marcus. "I need to go potty," I snarled. "Peter says you're my hallway buddy." Marcus just smiled at me and stepped aside so that I could walk in front of him.

Once inside the safety of the women's washroom, I barricaded myself in a stall and dialed Paul. "Sparky," he answered. "What the hell is going on with you? None of us wanted to interrupt in case you were having your reasonably fine ass handed to you."

"Shut up," I hissed. "I can't tell you what's going on, but you'll find out soon enough. Any news from Michigan? Newton hasn't called. I'm nervous."

"Jesus, haven't you been watching? The raid went down this morning. ATF stormed the complex about an hour ago - those maniacs had themselves a lovely little bomb factory going on in one of the sheds. We got some radical footage of a few explosions. Three ATF ops down, nobody dead - they took in about twenty people. We broke into regular programming with the report and a live feed. Eric shot the footage himself."

"Goddammit," I swore, kicking the door of the stall. "Shit shit shit. Everyone's okay, right? Tell me everyone's okay." I was livid that I'd been trapped in a conference room watching Edward get a haircut instead of being in the bullpen to cheer the guys on.

"Yeah, everyone's fine. Tyler managed to grab the head of the mission for a stand-up as the arrests were going on. I don't know what the hell he promised the guy to get that, but it's a great piece. And we're the only ones who have ANYTHING on it. Because we rule like that. Get that ass out here and dance around with us!"

"I wish I could," I muttered. "You don't know how badly I wish I could. But I can't."

Paul's voice turned serious. "Are you okay? What's going on? Wait - are you getting the big chair? You're getting the big chair, aren't you. I know Peter's in there. Christ, Bella."

"I'm on lock-down. I can't talk about it. But yeah," I whispered. "Don't say anything or I'll kick you 'til you bleed."

"Well, shit. Congratulations are in order. This is a good thing, right? I mean, you actually care about the news, which is a refreshing change from the norm."

"I think it's a good thing. I think so." I sounded less sure than I'd been before the news about the raid. Things were going to change between me and the guys, and that thought didn't make me very happy.

As if he could read my mind, Paul laughed. "Yeah, just don't forget about all the little people down here in the actual newsroom, making actual news for you to pretend you got all by yourself."

"Now I'm just going to kick you 'til you bleed whether you talk or not," I answered. "But seriously, don't say anything. The network's making the announcement tomorrow. I'm going stir-crazy. I might need you to bust me out of there soon."

"Say the word and we'll make it happen. Who else is in there?"

I hesitated. They didn't know about Edward yet, and I really didn't want to tell him. "I can't say. I really can't, so don't push me because you know I'd tell you if I could. You'll find out tomorrow."

"You suck."

"You wish," I couldn't help laughing. "I have to go. Text me if something happens. I hate not knowing what's going on."

"Will do. Later, Sparky," Paul said, and the call disconnected. I left the stall and washed my hands, giving myself a good look in the mirror as I did so. The contract was signed. I couldn't look backward. I'd just have to figure out how to make sure the changes between me and the guys in the bullpen weren't serious ones, because they were family and I would always be one of them. Always.

I stomped my way back to the conference room with Marcus hot on my trail. When I opened the door, my eyes found Edward in his new suit and teal tie - he'd taken the opportunity my absence created and just changed without leaving the room.

"Well?" he asked, throwing his arms out to his sides in sarcastic query. "Am I a Fall, or am I a Fall?"

I swallowed a little thickly. "You're right on the equinox of obnoxious, but you'll do," I finally managed. Because _Jesus_, he looked good.

"Check it out - my tie matches your shirt-thingy. Blouse. This must mean that you're a Fall as well," he grinned. "How fortunate that we coordinate. I'm sure the folks at home will care."

"Great. We look like we're going to the news prom," I muttered, then turned on Peter. "How come you neglected to mention that the Michigan raid went down? You had to know I was worried about the guys."

Edward's expression quickly shifted. "Are they okay?" I nodded, then turned back to Peter.

Peter coughed. "I'd have said something if it had gone wrong. I need you to focus on what's happening here, in this room. I get that you're concerned, Bella - I really do. I know you're close to the guys. But this is a big deal - for me, and for the network, and for you. This is where I need your energy, you understand?"

I nodded tersely. Don signaled that he was ready for us. Peter dialed an extension on the conference table phone and asked Heidi to send Charlotte in for whatever touch-ups we needed before stepping in front of the lens. Charlotte and her pink tackle box breezed through the door not two minutes later. She quickly fixed my lipstick and powdered me, adding some blush and straightening out my hair before spraying it into place. She turned to Edward and stared at him, studying him as though he were a painting hanging in a room at the Met.

"I got nothing," she finally stated. "A little powder, maybe? You don't really need it, but I like to feel useful."

"Go crazy," Edward invited her. "I draw the line at a clown nose, though." She brushed a bit of powder over his face and stowed her things back into the crowded tackle box. Don motioned us over to stand in front of the blue/gray backdrop, and then we were side by side, standing awkwardly with our hands at our sides, a good foot of empty space separating our bodies.

"No," Don said. "Let's start you back-to-back." We shuffled around until our backs were aligned against each other, carefully touching with the slightest possible pressure. It was still too much. "Okay, now cheat forward a little bit and each of you cross your arms." We did as we were told.

"I'm pretty sure we look like superheroes," I whispered to Edward, in order to break a bit of the sudden tension I was feeling.

"I'm no superhero," he whispered back.

"Quit talking," Don ordered, peering at us through his lens and adjusting one of the light stands. "'Okay, hold that." The camera clicked away endlessly as I tried to keep my eyes open and my thoughts composed.

We ran through a bunch of poses, none of which felt natural and all of which forced me to stand very close to Edward. I couldn't decide whether that was a good thing, or a very bad thing. Peter watched us carefully, suggesting various things to Don as we went along. After a grueling forty-five minutes of proximity to Edward, I was finally released so that Don could do solo shots. I tried not to watch as Edward stood there by himself, but it was mesmerizing. His face was thoughtful without being self-conscious in the least. If I hadn't heard the constant clicking of the camera, I might have assumed from the expression on his face that he was reading an interesting book. He had no bad side, and no unfortunate angle.

Too soon, it was my turn in front of the lens, and I did my best to not think about the fact that my picture was being taken. I hated having my picture taken, hated having the lens show me what I lacked and where I lacked it, but I understood that this was part of the process and so tried to submit with as much grace as I could manage. I'm sure I looked perfectly ridiculous when compared to Edward. Our respective tie and blouse might have coordinated, but in terms of the rest of us, Edward and I were a decidedly mismatched set on the physical spectrum. I reminded myself of that fact over and over again, hoping that it would eventually sink in. I wasn't ugly, and I knew it - but Edward had a league, and it was one in which I could never hope to play. Not that I wanted to. At all. How stupid would that be?

Brains before beauty. As a general rule, I was thankful I had the brains, but once in a very blue moon, I got a tiny bit wistful about the beauty.

I didn't notice that Edward was watching me the way that I'd watched him until the session was almost over. His eyes held mine for a moment before Peter announced that lunch had been delivered and that we'd earned some potato chips. Shaking my head to clear it of the thoughts which were rattling around in there, I began the hunt through the wraps on the sandwich tray, praying that there was some kind of turkey situation going on in there. Well, either turkey, or chicken. All things considered, perhaps chicken was the more appropriate choice for me.

# # #


	7. Troika's Company

# # #

Troika's Company

"Are you eating these?"

I shook my head and pushed the plate of chocolate chip cookies toward the center of the conference room table. It had been a long week, and I was exhausted.

The release on Tuesday precipitated an avalanche of press requests, and Edward and I spent the better part of Tuesday on the phone with reporters from the trades. We did the network's morning show on Wednesday morning, sitting side-by-side on the lurid orange settee and awkwardly trying to find the right balance between serious journalism and folksy "trust us" familiarity. If I hadn't been so wound up about playing my own part in this game, I'd have laughed my head off watching Edward attempt it.

Strangely, it rapidly became a case of "us versus them" on the press run. We both wanted to talk about the news, while the people who interviewed us seemed more interested in talking about our "fresh" faces and relative youth. I didn't recall signing up to anchor the hipster news, and I was pretty sure Edward was equally confused as to how the mountain of experience he brought to the table was somehow being overshadowed by the fact that he hadn't yet gone gray.

The guys in the bullpen were pretty cool about the announcement, with the fairly notable exception of Tyler. He cold-shouldered me for the better part of the day on Tuesday, until Paul and Newton told him to take his head out of his ass and be thankful that the network promoted from the newsroom.

"You gonna be a jerk now, Big Time?" he grumbled at me.

"No more than usual," I answered with a straight face.

One side of his mouth lifted in a rueful grin. "Just don't start letting your rack do your thinking for you, okay? I'll be watching."

I punched him on the arm, because it was the sort of affection he understood. "When are you not watching my rack. We're cool?"

He gave me a half-nod and told me I was officially out of all bullpen pools. We didn't bet on things like major league sports. Instead, we'd bet which of three yellow cabs at the stoplight on the street below us would make it to the end of the block first, or how many fries the burger joint sent up with Newton's lunch.

While I managed to escape with minimal initial damage, Edward was another story. The guys were torn between wanting to fawn all over him and remembering that he was technically an outsider. As a result, they ended up doing this weird little dance of "keep away" with him. It lasted until Wednesday at about three in the afternoon.

That's when _she _showed up.

We were trapped in the conference room again, finishing up a joint call with a reporter from _The Wall Street Journal_. It was a fairly dry interview, for which we were both pretty thankful - just straight-ahead information gathering. I disconnected the speakerphone on the conference room table and was in the process of rubbing my tired eyes when the door burst open and one of the most beautiful women I'd ever seen came storming into the room. It was difficult to judge her age, but she couldn't have been older than her late thirties at the outside.

"Priviet, Edward, finally!" she practically yelled, then crossed the room at lightning speed to grab him as he attempted to rise from his chair. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him squarely on the mouth, hard, as his hands rose to hold her by her shoulders.

Something strange and unpleasant began to gallop around in my stomach as I watched them, but the strangeness was quickly replaced with shock when, after detaching her lips from his, she promptly slapped him on his cheek with the back of a well-manicured hand. The slap was every bit as forceful as the kiss had been.

"Nu ty blyat i zasranietz! How do you leave and not tell me, stupid boy? I get phone call two days later. Where is dinner? Where is phone call?"

"Hello to you too, Tanya," Edward said mildly, rubbing the place on his face where her hand had recently left its mark. "Before security detains you for assaulting me, you might give me the opportunity to explain, you know."

"Explain!" She huffed. "There is no 'explain'. There is only apology. Shto za khuynia?" She tore off her fur coat and flung it across the table, then flopped down onto an empty chair, shaking her long, ginger-blonde hair back into sleek perfection.

Edward raised his eyebrows at me. "Bella, this is Tanya. Tanya, Bella."

"The producer, I gather?" I tried to keep my tone neutral, because I wasn't sure what to make of the odd display I'd just witnessed. Either they were the most passionate lovers I'd ever seen, or they'd be needing Peter to build them a death cage somewhere nearby to settle any disputes between them. Or maybe it was a bit of both.

Tanya interrupted Edward as he attempted to explain. "Da. Yes. Producer. I am the producer. And this - this is _mudak_," she pointed to Edward.

"I'm sorry. I really am. I have no idea what you're saying." I didn't want to agree or disagree with her until I knew what the hell I was agreeing or disagreeing about.

Edward sighed, and rolled his head on his neck to loosen the muscles there. "To recap, since she entered the room, Tanya's called me, variously, a dick and an asshole. She's also told me to fuck off and then asked me what the fuck I meant by leaving without telling her I was going. There was a 'hello' in there somewhere, too. Tanya, settle down and make an effort to speak English, please."

"Hello," I said, sticking my hand out for her to shake. "I'm Bella, Edward's co-anchor."

Tanya grabbed my hand and unceremoniously yanked me closer, setting the casters on the bottom of my chair spinning in her direction. "Bella. You work with him - on purpose? Sumasshedshaya. Prostite - sorry - it means 'crazy'." She looked me up and down without apology. "You are very pretty. She's very pretty, Edward. You don't say that before." It sounded as though she was accusing him of something. I also briefly wondered what she meant by "before".

"Possibly he doesn't agree with you," I suggested.

Tanya threw her head back and laughed. "I said he was stupid boy. He is not blind boy." Then she put her face very close to mine. "I like you. You are honest. We will be friends." I looked over at Edward to try to gauge his reaction to the conversation I was having with Tanya, but he seemed occupied with his phone and appeared to be sending a text.

"Uh, sure," I answered, wondering exactly how much choice I actually had in the matter.

Tanya nodded her head and released my hand, apparently satisfied. Then she turned her face up to Edward. "Tell me. Speak. I wait in my house for you to come for dinner, and then nothing. And I get call from some woman telling me I need to be in New York. So I'm here. Who is Heidi?"

"Heidi is the secretary to the head of the news division at this network. I would have called you myself, but I know how much you enjoy yelling at me and hitting me, so I thought we'd save the whole thing for when you got here. Happy Birthday, two months early."

"Hah!" Tanya laughed, evidently pleased that Edward understood her need to berate him. She lifted her shapely calves onto the empty chair next to her, and then reached over to her coat to grab a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the pocket.

"Tanya, you can't smoke in here," Edward shook his head as she light a cigarette.

"You are wrong, Edward. I can smoke in here. See? Is easy!" And she took a long drag, blowing smoke in his general direction as they smiled at each other.

"So," I said, suddenly feeling uncomfortable and completely unnecessary. "I'll, uh - I'll just..." I rose from my chair and waved toward the door with my hand to indicate my intention to exit the room, but both Edward and Tanya immediately objected to the plan.

"Please don't leave me alone with her," Edward smirked, resting his knuckles on the top of the table. "She's vicious and I need a witness."

Tanya extended a graceful arm to me, wrapping my wrist with her fingers and pulling me back to the table. "You sit. Tell me what he say to make you think is okay to work with him. You look smart. How can you say yes?"

Over the next five minutes, it became glaringly apparent that whatever they were to one another, Edward and Tanya were most definitely _not _romantically involved. She treated him like a lovable juvenile delinquent, and he treated her like an annoying big sister. I asked how they met, and sensed a moment of awkwardness before Edward explained that Tanya's husband was a colleague of his. There was no further mention of her husband, and they quickly went on to recount how foreign journalists in the former Soviet Union needed someone who knew how to grease wheels. Tanya was apparently the best wheel greaser in the business, and had rescued a significantly more naive, younger Edward from some pretty hairy situations.

"He has no sense," she mourned, affectionately shaking her head at him. They were in the middle of reminiscing about an escapade in the Balkans when the conference room door opened again and a harassed-looking Peter strode into the room.

"Listen - if you think setting off the smoke detectors is going to spring you out of here, you're sadly -" He stopped in mid-rant as he registered that we weren't alone. "Oh. Um, hello," he finished lamely, likely wondering whether he'd interrupted an interview. "I'm sorry - you are...?"

Tanya uncoiled herself from her chair and stalked over to where Peter stood in the doorway. His eyes - as he watched her approach, his eyes ricocheted all over her body, alternately registering appreciation and fear, because Tanya clearly knew how to inspire both with minimal effort. She reached him, standing well within the conventionally-accepted personal space of Western society, and proceeded to make mincemeat of his peace of mind while Edward watched and grinned.

"I'm so sorry," she purred at Peter. "I'm the producer for Edward. Tanya Vasilyev. He don't tell me is not okay to smoke here." She turned her head to face Edward and clicked her tongue against her teeth in admonition. "Stupid boy, you put me in trouble."

Peter vehemently shook his head. "Oh, no, no, no. I mean, you really shouldn't - it's against fire regulations - but of course you wouldn't know that, would you? It's fine, okay, really - just - let's not make a habit of it, okay? There's, uhm, a courtyard downstairs with ashtrays, and, uh, benches. Or, if you'd like, you can come upstairs? I have a balcony and a small patio off the conference room next to my office. If you'd like, I mean."

I watched Peter twist and mangle random thoughts in an effort to keep Tanya from - what? - leaving, maybe? He was more than a little thrown by her, and to be honest, I was thrilled that someone else around here felt a bit off-kilter. I also realized that my producer needed to be equal to the task of keeping things on a level playing field, because it was apparent to me that Tanya was no novice when it came to getting her way. This left me with only one obvious option, and that option was Emmett.

The deed was done with one brief phone call. I only hoped that the guys in the newsroom wouldn't ask to carry him back in on their shoulders when they got wind of his return to the fold. Tyler would be problematic, given that Emmett's departure had left him top dog in the bullpen, but the rest of the guys would be beside themselves. Peter heartily approved of the choice, anxious to lure Emmett back here from the news magazine job he'd taken with a competing network, and I knew that Emmett would more than hold his own against Tanya.

It had taken her five minutes to turn Peter's brain into goo. Converting the boys in the bullpen took less than a half-hour, as she moved from desk to desk, introducing herself and charming them all with her legs and her rolling "r"s. Newton called me shortly after Peter escorted her up to the executive floor to deal with contracts and work visas.

"What's the deal with Ivana Humpalot?" he asked me. "She left, like, half a dozen boners in her wake. Is she property of Edward Cullen, or what?"

"In the first place, a really good steak sandwich leaves half of you guys with boners - it doesn't take much. In the second place, I have no idea what goes on between those two. It's a question for him, not me," I snapped. I realized, as I answered the question, that I'd pretty much paved the road for Edward by telling them they'd have to work him to get to her. And work him they did. From that moment on, they made it a point to tail him whenever he left the conference room, dispensing with the hazing formalities and merely jockeying for a place on his producer's dance card. I'm sure he thought it was hilarious. I know Tanya did, because she'd breeze in and out, laughing at the things they'd shout at her as she passed. The boys were being as sweet as they knew how to be, and while she seemed to enjoy the attention, she spent no appreciable time with anyone other than Edward, myself, or Peter.

I liked her. She was razor-sharp, brutally honest, and had no real ego about her looks. To her, they were simply a tool, a means to an end. Hers wasn't really a studied sexuality; she didn't pose, and she wasn't vain. And even though she was quick to laugh, there was something slightly melancholy about her. I wanted to ascribe it to the fabled Russian emotional condition, but I knew that there was something more - something intensely personal - behind that sadness. It made me curious, and I promised myself I'd do a little digging when I had a moment to spare.

I had a lot on my mind as I pushed those cookies closer to Edward's side of the conference table on Friday afternoon. It had been a crazy, confusing week, and I was uncharacteristically exhausted from the constant strain of miming an easygoing relationship with Edward. I was also thoroughly frustrated at the lack of time I could devote to finding out where the Brandons were hiding Alice.

"It's official," Edward huffed as he snapped shut his phone. "Everyone in Congress is a moron."

I shook my head at him. "You're doing it wrong."

He folded his arms in front of him on the table and lowered his head a little. "You're really going to tell me I can't line up a bunch of sit-downs with the monkeys in the marble halls?"

I pursed my lips and considered whether or not I should actually answer him. It would be easy for me to leave him swinging in the breeze, but this health care reform story was half mine now, and I wanted to be in DC no later than Tuesday to get some of this stuff in the can.

"Listen, cowboy, there's a protocol. You follow the protocol, people talk. They don't know you yet, and they don't trust you. Even if you have no intention of actually sitting down with them, you need to factor in who's been leading the push on the legislation in order of seniority. You make those calls first, and it'll clear the road toward the people you really want to speak with."

He was silent for a minute. "Ah," he finally said. "I was going based on the size of their constituency."

I had to smile at him. "That's because it's the logical approach. I don't think logic and government have lunch with each other very often. It's not your fault that you took your eighth grade civics class so seriously."

Edward looked at me for a moment before mumbling a very quiet something that might have been "thank you". It might have been something else ending with "you" as well - there was really no way for me to tell.

"You _really_ don't like to be wrong, do you?"

"I couldn't say. It doesn't happen often enough for me to have established any kind of pattern," he laughed. "Listen, let's just get these interviews locked down this afternoon. Have you read the bill yet? Miller's office faxed over what they had, under embargo. It's completely insane. I went through it last night and it's a camel."

I furrowed my brows at him. "A camel?"

"Yeah, you know - a horse built by a committee. If this hits the House the first week of November and actually passes, it'll be a miracle. Get over here and take a look at this."

We spent the next few hours combing through the proposed bill and extracting key points to concentrate our questions around. We fought over how to attack several sections of the mammoth piece of legislation until Edward suggested splitting up the points based on cost and effect, and switching things up so that he'd address cost with his sit-downs at the Capitol, and I'd address effect with the lobbyists. I hated to admit it, but the switch gave the piece a whole new layer of interest for me.

When I checked my watch again, it was after three o'clock, and we were heading into the home stretch of a long and stressful week. I left Edward's end of the table and returned to mine, noticing as I did that my phone had three new text messages, the warnings for which I must have missed during our debate on story strategy.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I realized all three text messages were the same, and had been sent within a span of two minutes roughly an hour ago. No words. Just a number with a North Jersey area code: 973-555-0157. My breath caught in my throat and my field of vision was suddenly restricted to the screen on the phone, the numbers it held, and nothing else.

"What? What is it? Is Coop texting you to let you know he's considering changing religions?" Too late, I realized that Edward's sharp eyes wouldn't miss the kind of reaction I had to what was occupying the screen on my phone. I didn't want to tell him about this. Whatever I'd shared with him last weekend had been shared in a moment of - something. Weakness. Shock. Uncertainty, maybe. It wasn't going to happen again.

When I didn't immediately answer, he hopped out of his chair and was standing next to me in the blink of an eye. "Show me," he said, in the voice which made cobras and vipers sway like harmless poppies. I pulled the phone up to my chest like an idiot and shook my head.

"Bella, show me," he repeated. "Come on. Is it Alice again? Show me what it says."

"Why are you so interested? I can handle it myself," I challenged him, even though I had no idea whether what I asserted was in any way accurate.

His brows drew together and I could see the muscles in his jaw flex. "I've already given you my reasons. Don't tell me you've forgotten them. Now show me what's on your phone. Please."

"It's really none of your business, Edward." I tried to make my voice sound hard and convincing when I said it. This whole situation with him felt backwards and strange and more than a little unsettling. He'd managed to worm his way into a part of my life that was roped off to tourists. He was occupying way too many of my thoughts for it to be safe for me to open the door any wider than I already had.

"Why are you being so pig-headed about this? I know you're tough. I know you're good at what you do; you don't need to prove anything to me, okay? You are _not_ objective about this situation, and it's either going to cost you, or it's going to cost Alice. Show me the goddamned phone."

We stared at each other for a long moment. "What makes you think I'm trying to prove anything to you, Edward?"

He exhaled loudly, clearly frustrated. "Maybe you're not. Maybe I was hoping you wouldn't. It doesn't matter. Get used to the fact that you don't have a choice about this particular issue. I swear to God, I will tail you 24/7. You're _not_ doing this alone. I don't care if you think I'm being a complete asshole and overreacting. I'd rather overreact than underreact."

I kept the phone to my chest, but his reaction startled me. It ran so counter to logic that I couldn't figure out what his real motive was. I did what I usually do when I need to know something. I asked. "What's this really about? Tell me, and I'll show you the phone."

Edward let out an exasperated growl. "Let's just say that I don't leave colleagues in the field by themselves. There might be decent coffee and toilet paper here, but that doesn't mean this place is any less dangerous than any of the other places I've been." He leaned down to me and put his face very close to mine. "Whatever you're up to, I'm coming along for the ride. I might even be useful, if you let me be."

If I thought that the numbers on my phone's screen were mesmerizing, I was completely mistaken, because having his eyes so close to mine, staring at me with that much intensity, completely redefined the meaning of the word for me. I could actually feel his breath on my cheek, and it gave me a strange chill. He rendered me defenseless, and while I deplored myself for it, I was powerless to stop him. Defeated, I pulled the phone from my chest to show him the text.

He studied it for a minute, then nodded his head. "Right. Call the number. This is getting ridiculous. And put the speakerphone on so I can hear who picks up."

"Don't order me around, Edward," I said, but I hit the "call back" option and toggled over to speakerphone.

The other end of the line rang twice, and then a hopelessly-bored female voice answered. "Good afternoon, Greymore Psychiatric. How may I direct your call?"

I hung up the line without speaking and turned to face him. "I'm going."

"Plan," he countered. "We need a plan."

I thought for a moment, and then it hit me. "The health care reform story. I'll set up an interview to discuss the impact of the legislation on federally-assisted psych patients."

Edward sprinted over to the conference room door and threw it open. "Tanya!" he bellowed, not caring how many eardrums were offended. "In here. Now."

Within thirty minutes, we'd isolated key staff to target at Greymore, and Tanya had burned up the phone lines, purring us into two pre-interviews for Saturday afternoon with no cameras. She didn't once ask why we wanted to do it - she just threw herself into the task and made the requests sound reasonable. I got the impression that unusual requests from Edward weren't all that foreign for her.

I was forced to acknowledge to myself that Edward was right: treating this like a news story made me feel more in control of things than I otherwise would have felt. By focusing on the health care angle, I was able to stop myself from freaking out about the fact that somewhere in the halls of Greymore, my soul sister was suffering enough to reach out to me using whatever methods were at her disposal. I'd already called the hospital back to make sure that patients couldn't receive outside phone calls, and was told that only pre-approved people could get any information at all on patients, and nobody could just call to speak with them. That left me with no choice but to go in and try to find her. Every time I thought about her in there, alone and probably frightened, my heart clenched and I started to panic, wanting nothing more than to just drop everything and start running in her general direction as fast as I could.

"Don't," Edward said without looking up at me from his place across the table, where he was picking through the proposed legislation for key questions impacting mental health. "Tomorrow has to be soon enough for you."

"So, you're a mind reader now?" It made me extremely uncomfortable to know that he could so accurately guess where my thoughts had wandered off to.

"Yes. I read minds," he deadpanned. "Not that I need to with you, because your fingers are about ten seconds away from drilling a hole into the top of this table."

I abruptly stopped the unconscious drum solo I'd been inflicting on the smooth cherrywood.

Tanya sailed through the door again, waving a stack of 11" x 14" legal papers in her hand. "So simple. The Americans hide nothing. Is like children playing game here," she said, clearly delighted.

Edward arched his eyebrows over his glasses. "Hit me. What'd you find?"

But instead of walking over to Edward, Tanya headed toward my side of the desk and put the papers in front of me. I looked down and saw she'd printed out PDF files of what appeared to be a building plan labeled "150 Bed Psychiatric Hospital".

"Where did you find this? Is it Greymore?"

Tanya nodded her head. "They put plans in town zoning committee meeting minutes. So crazy," she answered, not appreciating her apt phrasing. "This was proposed renovation from two years ago. The local newspaper says it was finished with renovation last August. I don't even have to get out of my chair for this. Is all online, like idiots."

Edward snorted. "Tanya, I don't think anyone was particularly concerned about a break-in at a psych hospital. It's hardly classified material. Nice work, though - thank you. Maybe you'll even show it to me, eventually."

He sounded less annoyed than he probably was, and I understood his reaction. If Emmett decided to come to him with information first, I'd have been furious. To compensate, I asked him what he made of the drawings. He shoved his laptop aside and took a look at the papers Tanya spread out in front of him on the desk.

"Looks like the first two units are semi-private, and the third is single-bed. Given what you've told me about Alice's family, she's probably in the single-bed unit, right?" I nodded. "Okay, so the single-bed unit is to the right of the administrative office cluster. We'll push to do the interviews there, and then sneak down the hallway to see if we can find her."

"There are at least two doors between the admin cluster and Unit Three. How are you suggesting we get through those doors?"

Edward shrugged his shoulders. "No idea. We'll figure it out when we get there."

"We'll figure it out when we get there? This is your plan? It's not really much of a plan, Edward," I said.

Tanya laughed. "Oh, Bella, you don't see what he is like when he do these things. If he wants to go down hallway, he'll go down hallway."

I had my doubts, but that was an issue for tomorrow. "Listen. This is _my _friend and _my_ problem. You don't get to make any decisions about how we do this. Against my better judgment, I'm letting you come along, but that doesn't mean you get to do more than ride shotgun. Is that understood?"

Edward had the nerve to sling a slow smile in my direction. "Oh, yeah, understood, absolutely. Sure. No problem, sweetheart."

"I'm serious."

"I'm sure you are," he answered, giving me the impression he was sure of no such thing.

# # #


	8. Alice in Switzerland

# # #

Alice in Switzerland

When I exited my lobby at 9:30 on Saturday morning, Edward was already standing on the sidewalk in front of the doors. He was wearing a pair of olive chinos, a gray t-shirt, a light blue oxford button-down, a long brown wool overcoat, and a pair of white chucks. He also carried a beat-up gray backpack.

"You look like Doctor Who on casual Fridays," I commented as I let the door to my building swing closed behind me. I didn't tell him that he also looked more relaxed and approachable than I'd ever seen him look.

He handed me a cup of coffee. "You look like the president of the Sphincter Society," he retorted with a grin. "What's with the suit?"

I looked down at my navy crepe skirt and jacket. "I'm working today, Edward. I'm conducting an interview. Will you be waiting for me at the swing set in the playground?"

"Hmmm, tempting. I'm not really much of a swinger, though. Where's the car?"

"They're bringing it up," I answered with a reluctant smile. "Thanks for the coffee." I hoisted my cup in his direction as a silent toast, and he returned the gesture.

"Anytime. Can I drive?"

I shrugged, not seeing any reason to deny him the once chance I'd give him to be in control of anything today.

"A Saab? Really?" he said, as the garage attendant pulled my car up to the top of the driveway and opened the door.

"You don't get to mock Saabie and drive her," I warned him. "I love this car."

"Fair enough. Let's get this show on the road." He slid into the driver's seat and leaned over to open the door to the passenger side.

The drive out to Greymore was a tense one for me, but that had nothing to do with Edward. All I could do was imagine my poor Alice in a room by herself, struggling with her dream demons and desperate for a friend who understood her. 'I'm on my way', I kept chanting in my head. 'I'm on my way, and we'll make it better. I promise you, we'll make it better.'

I was completely startled when I felt Edward's hand briefly cover mine as it lay on my lap. "You okay? We'll be there soon. There's no sense making yourself sick about it until you see what's going on. Stay focused."

I turned to see him half-tilt his head in my direction, and he gave me a reassuring smile. Something primitive and unfamiliarly female swept over me, and I was suddenly grateful beyond words that he'd insisted on coming along, even if I'd rather die than admit that to him.

"Look at it this way: it could be like scouting college campuses for you. Maybe they have an early admissions program or something," he grinned.

"Ooooh, hilarious," I answered. "Let's just go over the game plan. We've got Warner first - he's the general manager of the facility, and really more of an administrative figure than a health care provider. So we'll work him on how quickly funding is processed and whether this means additional hoops for them to jump through or if it will streamline the process."

"Right. You can take point on that - he sounds as dull as dirt, and you're definitely dressed for dull today, sweetheart. I'll take point on Aronson and whether this means altering alternative therapies and experimental treatments for fed-funded patients."

"Edward, you don't get to decide anything today, is that clear? I mean it. Do what you want with the interviews - I really couldn't care less. I'll get whatever information I can from them and hopefully it'll be something we can use in the piece, but I'm here for Alice. _Alice_. Got it?"

He nodded his head solemnly. "Got it. Loud and clear, Frau No-Fun."

"Are you even listening to me? This is serious." As quickly as gratitude earlier overcame me, I was suddenly swamped with irritation that he didn't seem to understand the gravity of the situation.

Edward rolled Saabie to a stop at a red light and turned to face me. "I hear you. It's serious. But while it's serious, it's also an adventure. Unclench, Bella. I think you've neglected to consider the fact that you need to be a little loose if you want to pull off a stunt like sneaking around a psychiatric hospital in broad daylight." He punched the stereo on, found the pedestrian classic rock station on the FM dial, and cranked up the volume. "Van Halen," he grinned. "Oh, perfect. Come on - get your hair a little messy."

I just shook my head at him, but the way he was bouncing around in the seat and screaming the lyrics forced a smile onto my lips. He was like a whippet on the hunt, lean and alert and excited. When the Van Halen song segued unexpectedly into Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry", I laughed outright along with Edward.

"The irony," he shook his head. "This song makes me want to punch someone. Don, probably, but anyone would do in a pinch."

"He's got a point, though - it's one of my biggest fears about having taken this job," I confessed. "I don't want to be a talking head."

"Well," he said, as he steered the car into the font gates of Greymore, "you're about to tip-toe around The Man in search of your institutionalized friend. That doesn't exactly smack of detachment to me. I think that as long as you remember how to stay involved, it's not going to be much of an issue for you. And you're in luck, because I plan on mocking the hell out of you if I catch you watching your tapes to see if you do funny things with your face when you read."

"I never do funny things with my face," I frowned as he pulled into the Visitors parking lot and killed the engine. He extracted the keys from the ignition and dangled them in front of me before dropping them into my waiting hand, opening and closing his mouth several times as he did so.

"What?"

He lifted one corner of his mouth in response, but shook his head. "Never mind. Let's get to snooping." And with no further explanation, he hopped out of the car and pushed the door closed.

Together, we climbed the wide, deep stairs to the entrance of the hospital and walked through the large graphite-colored doors into the cool stillness of the reception area. Edward whistled under his breath. "You'd have to be rich to go crazy in this kind of style," he murmured. I poked him with an elbow and headed over to the reception desk, behind which sat a pleasant-looking forty-something woman with bobbed auburn hair.

"Can I help you?" Her voice was friendly, but efficient. I opened my mouth to speak, but Edward dove in before I could get a word out.

"Hi," he smiled, and it was that Big Smile of Death to Feminine Willpower. She shifted in her chair and blinked, which under the circumstances was an admirable display of composure. Edward leaned across the counter and kept the Smile of Death fully-stoked. "We've got an appointment with Mr. Warner and Doctor Aronson. Can you let them know that Edward Cullen and Bella Swan are here, please?"

She hadn't moved except to blink several more times, so I determined that she might need a little antidote. I scooted up to lean next to Edward. "We'll just wait - over there - by the chairs, if that's all right." I tugged on Edward's sleeve to compel him to leave the poor woman alone, and he half-turned to follow, keeping his face pointed in her direction for a final moment before he winked at her.

"Jesus, Edward, tone it down," I hissed at him as we made our way over to the seating area. He shrugged at me and his answering grin was sadly no less disturbing than the Big Smile had been.

"She might come in handy at some point today," was his rationale.

"Yeah, well, she's not going to be much use to us with an oxygen mask over her face. Use your powers for good," I muttered, trying not to look directly into the charming grin. We had just barely settled into the plush black leather chairs when another woman walked over to us.

"Mr. Cullen? Ms. Swan? I'm Judy Maguire, the Director of Marketing for Greymore," she stuck her hand out in greeting as we rose from our seats, and I was flabbergasted to note that Edward's Smile of Death didn't seem to affect her at all. She returned his smile with a bland one of her own, informing us that we'd be doing our sit-downs with Mr. Warner and Dr. Aronson in the conference room near the executive offices. She handed us each visitors passes and asked us to pin them to ourselves, then turned and motioned for us to follow her.

"Losing your touch, are you?" I whispered.

Edward pretended to sniff his armpit, which made me smile. "I can't explain it," he whispered back, feigning confusion. "Check her pulse - maybe she's a zombie, or a fembot, or something."

"You might have to accept the fact that your powers don't work on everyone, Edward."

He grabbed my arm to momentarily halt my progress. "Maybe I don't want them to work on _everyone_," he whispered, before letting go of me and continuing to follow in Judy's wake. I didn't even want to consider whether or not I fell into the camp of people on whom he hoped his powers were ineffective.

Our interview with Richard Warner was about as dry as Edward had predicted it would be. I managed to sneak in a few questions about whether or not the patients who were privately-funded had different accommodations from fed-funded patients, and Warner was happy to share that the "patients with means", as he put it, had access to private rooms in Unit 3. Edward kicked my leg under the table, and I kicked him back, because I'm not deaf and he needed to stop treating me like an imbecile.

Warner was clearly proud of the facility, so I played on that for a while. We talked about the recent renovation project, and discussed the fact that Greymore was proudly unaffiliated with any of the major healthcare management groups in the country, preferring the autonomy of self-ownership even when it was possibly less cost-effective.

"What percentage of your patients are federally-funded, as a general rule?" Edward, who had been casually draped over one of the two chairs in front of Mr. Warner's desk, sat forward to listen to his answer.

Warner scratched his head. "Offhand, I'd say we generally handle approximately a dozen patients with public funding at any given point in time."

"Ah," Edward nodded. "I see. Hey - are they, you know, quarantined, or kept away from the self-pay population on another level of the building?"

The man behind the desk tilted his head to one side and furrowed his brow at Edward. "I'm sorry? I don't understand the question."

It was my turn to kick Edward now, so I did. He coughed loudly and leaned back in his chair. "Can we get back on track? I was wondering whether your office projects patient population on a calendar basis, and if so, how many bed days you might reserve for fed-funded patients." I leaned my face in front of Edward's to recapture Warner's attention, and managed to distract him away from opening up what I was pretty sure was going to be a bit of a tirade on the subject of second-class citizenship in psych hospitals.

About thirty minutes into the interview, I could sense all of the buttering-up had softened Warner in my direction. He was about as loose as a guy like him was likely to get, so I took the chance.

"It's really a beautiful hospital from what I can see, Richard," I smiled enthusiastically, then let my face drop a bit. "I don't suppose - would you be willing to maybe give me a little tour before we leave today?" Richard hesitated, and I caught Edward's eyebrows raising slightly. "I mean, obviously, I'll be completely respectful of patient confidentiality. Anything I see or hear will be strictly off the record and not for attribution. I'd just love to sneak a look at the way you're taking that vision of a facility for the next millennium and putting it into practice." I looked him straight in the eyes, letting him see the sincerity in mine. I had no evil intention, no nefarious ulterior motive to undermine him here in any way, and I could show him that with a clear conscience. "This isn't an exposé, Richard. I'm not Geraldo Rivera. I want to make it clear to Americans that public healthcare doesn't equal diminished quality in this hospital." The words coming out of my mouth were really saying '_I want to find Alice, Richard. Open the goddamned doors.'_

"Uh," Warner rumbled. I shifted to lean further into his space as Edward leaned further back, giving me the room to accomplish my goal.

"I know it's a lot to ask - but I honestly think the hospital congloms should know that the smarter private sector offers quality care, which is something _every_ patient, self-pay or funded, wants above and beyond everything else. It's a crowded marketplace, but what you deliver clearly outclasses the field." Short of promising him his own national sixty-second spot in the broadcast, I'd done everything I could do to get through the door the legal way.

He eyed me for a moment, and I could hear Edward softly snort from somewhere behind me. Finally, Richard nodded. "I suppose— as long as I have your guarantee that you'll maintain strict confidentiality..."

"You have our word. If you'd like us to sign a release, We'll gladly do it," I answered, with what I hoped was a brilliant and grateful smile. Edward merely nodded his head and assumed a politely interested expression, as though the subject bored him but he was determined to humor my enthusiasm. I was pretty sure he was as stoked as I was to have a look around, though.

"Let's call Dr. Aronson in here so he can join us for a tour. He'll be able to answer your questions about specific programs and treatments far more accurately than I could." Warner picked up the receiver of his phone and punched in an extension, asking Dr. Aronson to join us in his office.

A moment later, the office door opened to reveal a sixty-something man, reedy and gangly, with a long, thin face and an uncertain smile. Edward stood as he entered, shaking his hand and subtly pulling him along. "Let's walk and talk, shall we?" It was obvious that I wasn't the only one in the room itching to take a stroll around the place.

Not knowing how to refuse him, Aronson simply nodded his head and the four of us made our way out of the executive suite. As we walked, Edward peppered the doctor with a series of fairly intricate questions, and I realized he was priming the pump so that they'd be distracted enough not to notice my eyes roving all over the place. At the end of a long corridor, we came to the first in a series of locked doors, beside which was mounted a digital keypad. The doctor removed his name badge, swiped the card across a sensor on the pad, and place his thumb against a biometric scanner built in to the device. We heard the door click open.

"Nifty," Edward grinned. "Tell me, what happens in the event of a power outage? Do the doors automatically lock down, or is there some kind of manual override?"

Warner interrupted, all too glad to share. "Of course there's a manual code, and in the event of a power loss, the doors would automatically unlock for the safety of the patients. But we've got backup power in the form of several on-site generators, so it's never been an issue. A hospital —even one in which patients don't generally rely on life-saving machines—can never really afford to be without power."

Edward nodded along in perfect agreement. "Makes sense. Is that a building code thing for hospitals, or just something you installed as a security measure?"

"It's not a code issue," Warner answered. "And while we don't technically require one for licensing by the New Jersey DOH, because there's a separate emergent care facility close-by and we don't house patients who require life-sustaining equipment, we have them anyway. I'd rather not have our patients upset by a sudden power outage."

"It's great that you're so heavily invested in their comfort," Edward said appreciatively. "Say, I didn't even ask—how long have you been here at Greymore?"

"Eleven years this past October," he responded. Dr. Aronson, who'd been loping along behind us without saying much of anything, seemed to switch on like a lamp the minute we walked through the open door.

"Well now, this is Unit One. It's a bit of a clearing house for us. We process new arrivals here, along with people who show up in crisis and who need immediate attention and supervision."

"Suicidal?" I hated the word, but I wanted to get it out there. The doctor nodded. "They're in a great deal of emotional pain when they show up, so we keep a half-dozen rooms empty at all times, and use them as a combination exam area/consult spaces. No sheets, no cords, small windows." The matter-of-fact way in which he delivered these details sent a shiver down my spine, and made me wonder whether this was where they first brought Alice. _Alice_.

We continued to walk through the unit, then passed down another long corridor before reaching a second set of locked doors. More card-swiping and thumbprints gave us access, and the doctor and Warner started chatting about the various treatment rooms we were passing. Art therapy, gym, session rooms, and a cafeteria were banked along the corridor, facing the enclosed courtyard outside. Patients in sweatpants and t-shirts milled quietly around the place as we walked, carefully avoiding eye contact for the most part. I stood as long as I could in each space, scanning the people and praying I'd catch sight of her, but coming up empty every time - until we reached the solarium at the end of the corridor.

There, tucked away in a far corner of the room on a chintz-cushioned garden chair, sat the huddled figure of my dearest friend. Her hair, normally so electric and assertive, hung dry and limp against the sallow hollows of her cheekbones. Her beautiful gray eyes were partially obscured by unnaturally heavy eyelids, and there were dark smudges of blueish-black under them, testifying to an ongoing lack of peaceful sleep. She wore a fluffy pink robe I recognized as her cozy costume for "girls' night in", along with a pair of bright teal toe socks which made her look like a forlorn Seussian cartoon character. I winced at the sight of her, and felt Edward's hand on my elbow, cautioning me to stay where I was and not fly across the room. I was thankful I didn't need to give him a sign that I'd found who I was looking for.

Aronson was talking about Vitamin D and light therapy to aid depressives, and Edward was eagerly picking up the line and riffing out questions about holistic options to keep us where we were. The bullshit he was spinning was pretty impressive. I sent every thought I had in Alice's direction, begging her to look up and find me with her eyes, begging her to realize that I was here, at last, and that I wasn't going to leave until I knew what I could do to help her.

She wouldn't look up, focusing instead on a hand which covered hers as it lay on the arm of her white wicker chair. I followed the line of that stranger's hand up to study what had captured my friend's attention, and found myself considering a tall, slender young man with a crop of blonde curls gone to seed on his head. He was perfectly still as he sat next to her, his neat navy-blue track pants and spotless white t-shirt at hopeless odds with his unruly hair. At first glance, he seemed on the slight side, but further study revealed a pair of powerful shoulders and the kind of corded strength you find in long-distance runners. Not a word passed between them; instead, they merely sat looking at their hands, as though the connection of skin upon skin made words between them unnecessary. It was eerie, and exclusionary, and somehow extremely tender.

Not knowing how else to break through the atmosphere surrounding the pair of them, I resorted to the tricks of an eighth-grader. I fake-sneezed—loudly—several times, knowing that Alice would be able to identify the sound and its source in a dark football stadium, because she'd been teasing me about the high pitch of my sneeze since we were children. And sure enough, the sound broke through the haze surrounding her. She slowly raised her head in a gesture that made it clear that she didn't really expect to find anything worth looking at, but when her eyes focused and she found me, her entire face transformed from passive acceptance to frantic need. Edward must have been monitoring all of this while he chatted on with Warner and Aronson, because his grip on my elbow tightened in warning.

Alice bent closer to the man next to her and started whispering in his ear. He nodded several times and whispered back, then released her hand and slowly, slowly, stood and stretched himself. He made his way over to a low coffee table in a furniture grouping at the side of the room, grabbing a piece of paper and tearing a small corner of it away. He scribbled something on the scrap of paper, screwed it up into a thin pipe, and then wandered over to where we stood at the door with our chaperones.

He made as if to exit the room, but lightly grasped my hand as he passed me, slipping me the screwed-up piece of paper as he did so, and then passing out into the hall. I quickly slid the paper into the pocket of my suit jacket and interrupted a fascinating dialogue about the possible benefits of lymphatic massage to ask Warner whether there was a restroom nearby. He gestured toward a door across the hall from the sunroom, telling me they'd wait for us outside. Thanking him, I turned to take one last look at Alice, who fixed me with the fiercest stare I'd ever seen her give anyone. I nodded slightly and walked as casually as I possibly could to the restroom, which a nearby nurse opened for me with her key.

It was a single stall affair, so I just locked the door and snatched the paper from my jacket pocket.

_Canteen. 30 minutes._

I took a deep breath, then pocketed the note and washed my hands. I had thirty minutes to finish this tour, find the canteen, and get in and out without causing a problem for myself or Alice.

The men were waiting for me in the hallway, keeping a respectful distance from the door of the bathroom in case I decided to make mysterious feminine noises in there. "Sorry," I said as I rejoined them with a smile. Edward asked me questions with his eyes, questions I couldn't answer with other people so close to us. "Please - lead on," I said to Warner, and fell back behind him and Aronson, tugging on the sleeve of Edward's coat to have him fall in step with me. I slipped him the note from my pocket, which he palmed and read in the blink of an eye while he continued to send flare-like questions to the gentlemen ahead of us.

Two corridors and several secure doors later, we were in the single-bed unit, and Warner was blathering on about clinical trials for medications to alleviate symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. I threw every question that came to mind in his direction in an effort to keep him entertained and engaged, while Edward drew off Aronson. We admired the spacious single rooms, shook hands with a few of the staff, and finally, finally, we were walking down the last hallway between Unit 3 and the main reception area. We were almost back in the lobby when we passed a closed door with a plaque which read "Canteen". "Ah," Edward grinned. "Is this your 19th hole, guys? Nice."

Warner laughed. "The doctors have their own break room in Unit 2 - this is where boring suits like me grab a sandwich."

"Looks like a nice quiet spot," I commented, hoping he'd bite.

"Not nearly as quiet as I need it to be, most days," Warner smiled. "It's Saturday, and I'm only in because I wanted to make myself available to you. The rest of the administrative staff are picking up their dry cleaning and taking their kids to soccer games today."

I put my hand on his forearm. "Richard, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to meet with us. You've been extraordinarily kind and helpful—you too, Dr. Aronson. Edward and I clearly have a lot of information to sift through as we prep for this story. Would it be too much to ask if we can call you later in the week to nail down the specifics for a follow-up?"

"Just ring Judy and she'll work out anything you need from a scheduling perspective," he replied, covering my hand with his own and then sliding it down to shake it. "It's been a pleasure, Ms. Swan, Mr. Cullen."

"Bella, please," I said as I clasped his hand.

"Yeah, I get a little itchy when someone calls me Mister," Edward grinned, and I passed Warner's clammy hand over to him to shake. "It's Edward. Thanks so much for taking the time out of your day off to talk us through the deal here. It's been extremely...educational."

"Our pleasure," Warner smiled, and Aronson nodded along. One final handshake from each of them, and we were left to our own devices in the lobby.

"Come on," I hissed at him. "We can't talk here." Edward casually dropped his backpack on one of the black leather chairs in the reception area, and we walked out the front door. "Okay," I said. "We need to get into the canteen, and we need to do it quickly - I think we've got about five minutes before Alice shows. Ideas?"

"Don't worry about the door. If it's locked, I'll just unlock it. Let's go inside. I'll get my backpack, and I think you need to use the bathroom again. There's one two doors down from the canteen, and no security cameras in that stretch of the hallway. Piece of cake, really."

"I can pick a lock just as quickly as you can, if not quicker. What are you going to do while I'm gone?"

"What am I going to do? I'm coming with you. Think I'd miss this?" He seemed genuinely offended by the suggestion.

"Edward, you can't join me in the bathroom."

"Sadly, this is true. Don't worry about it. I'll be there." And with that, he put his hand on my lower back and propelled me through the door again. The same receptionist was still at her station, her eyes tracking Edward's every movement like a hawk with a field mouse in its sights.

"Excuse me," I smiled at her, and she reluctantly turned her eyes away from where Edward was leaning against her desk. "I'm so sorry to bother you. It's a long drive back to the city, and I could _really_ use a restroom before we head out. I saw one just down there - is it all right if I pop in for a quick visit?"

She regarded me uncertainly. "Oh, go on, let her go," Edward grinned. "You wouldn't make me ride all the way back to Manhattan with her complaining every mile, would you? Have some mercy on me, ah, Shelley?" The end of that came out as a question, because he was reading her name from the tag she wore on her lemon yellow cardigan.

Shelley blushed, all peach and delighted confusion, as she went back to gazing at Edward. "Oh—well—um, I guess...sure, why not. You'll need the key, though. Here," she said, handing it to me. "I'd unlock it myself, but I can't leave the desk."

"Shoo—go do what you gotta do," Edward said, waving his hand at me. "I'll just keep Shelley here company. No rush," he grinned, and I honestly feared the poor woman was going to keel over. '_Cool it,'_ I mouthed to him as I spun around to head down the short hallway to the restroom. Reaching the canteen door, I jiggled the handle and determined that the door was indeed locked.

There were several handy things about having a police chief for a father: the entire force was my own personal bodyguard detail, and I could call on any of them at a moment's notice to pick me up from anywhere in town, any time; I knew how to load, fire, and clean a .38 caliber duty gun; I could defend myself against most unarmed physical assaults with a few moves; and the weekday desk sargeant in Forks loved to share his passion for criminal tricks of the trade with a fawning, curious schoolgirl while she waited for his boss to drive her home on Mondays and Wednesdays. As a result, I could take down most standard locks with a paper clip and the Swiss Army Mini Champ which hung from my key chain. I'd had the foresight to swipe a large paperclip from Shelley's desk while she languished under Edward's spell. The canteen door itself boasted nothing more complicated than a standard Kwikset six-pin cylinder, which was not at all unlike the locks I practiced on at the station. I made quick work of setting the pins against the shear line, pulled down the handle, and slipped inside the deserted room.

There were four cafe tables with chairs, a galley kitchen set-up, and several vending machines humming against the wall. It was fairly spartan, but sunlight filtered through three large double-hung windows, cheering up a row of houseplants along the ledge at the far end. One of the windows was suddenly obscured by a mop of blonde curls, and the bottom sash slid quietly up on its rails. A moment later, Alice wriggled through the window and fell to the floor, quickly followed by the man who'd slipped me the note in the sunroom.

I tripped across the room to grab Alice as she reached out to me, and the two of us hugged each other fiercely without speaking for the next minute or two. She felt tiny, even smaller than usual, and the strength quickly left her embrace as she dissolved against me in exhaustion.

"I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry," I whispered into her limp hair. "I didn't know, I've been desperate, your parents wouldn't tell me where you were."

Alice's doll hands weakly grabbed at my shoulders. "Oh, B, I knew you'd come. I knew. But it took so long, and I've been so scared," she whispered back, shivering and blinking away tired tears.

"We don't have long—ten minutes, maybe," said the blonde man apologetically. "Best hurry up and tell her what you need to." Alice took a deep breath and shook her head, trying to calm down enough to speak clearly.

"Sorry—B, this is Jasper." Her voice was stronger now, and the corners of her mouth lifted in a gentle smile. Jasper briefly looked away from Alice to acknowledge me with a half-wave, but his face remained somber and he looked slightly worried. The door to the canteen opened unexpectedly, and Edward strolled in. Alice jumped away from me and shivered again, but I steadied her.

"It's okay. He's with me. Where's Shelley?"

He frowned. "She's having a bit of phone trouble, I'm afraid." Then he took a small device out of his pocket and wiggled it in the air. Jasper's eyes narrowed for a moment as he stared in disbelief at the large coil of copper wire jutting out from what looked like an antique mobile phone. "E.M.P.? Handheld?" Edward nodded and smiled. "Short range, but effective. Handy little thing to carry around. The Yugoslavians pull them off of US arms and repurpose them for the, uh, casual user." He held his right hand out to Jasper. "Edward. Cullen."

"Jasper Whitlock."

Edward studied him for a moment before asking, "Who were you with?"'

Jasper gave him a grim smile. "101st."

Edward whistled softly in response. "A Screaming Eagle. You guys took Mosul in '03, right? Nasty stuff."

Jasper made a brief attempt to cover up several large scars on his bare arms, but Alice released me to gently brush his hands away. "No," she said. "Perfect, just the way you are."

His face softened as he looked down at her. "Get on with it, Bitsy - we're running out of time."

Alice sighed, blowing her breath upwards to lift the hair from her forehead. "I wish I could tell you exactly what's going on, but none of it makes any sense. I started having the - the dream - you know - about three weeks ago. It's always the same. I'm in what looks like the basement of a huge building - or maybe it's an underground parking garage, except I don't see any cars. The walls are concrete, and they look kind of...curved. I don't know how else to explain it. There are a bunch of what look like ladders or stairs on the wall, so there must be several levels to the place, and there's what look like tram tracks on one side. The place is full of people wearing hard hats; some yellow, some blue, and they obviously work there, which makes the parking garage theory sound unlikely, I guess. In the dream, I understand French -isn't that funny? I don't speak a word of it, really, but I understand it in the dream.

"Anyway, I know I'm in Switzerland, but I don't know exactly where in Switzerland because I can't see any signs or landmarks since I'm underground. Everything's calm, until all of a sudden, someone starts screaming my name, over and over and over again. And then a few people are yelling and everyone starts freaking out, and then—" Alice abruptly stopped speaking, pulling her lips between her teeth and looking down.

I reached out for her, but Jasper was there before I could get her, and he wrapped her up in a comforting hug. "Finish the story," he murmured, encouraging her.

She shuddered in his arms, but sucked in another breath. "And then, nothing. Everything disappears."

Edward cocked his head to the side. "Disappears? Disappears how, exactly?"

Alice slowly shook her head. "I don't know. Everything's just gone. Gone. It all goes black. It goes black, and I wake up screaming, because I know they're all dead." Her large, sad eyes looked at me, begging me to understand. "B, you know I couldn't. I don't know _how_ I'm involved, or what I do, but they're all dead, and I can't—I just can't—" she started gasping for air, and Jasper rocked her gently back and forth.

"Oh, no, Ali, of course you don't do anything," I said, my lungs squeezed for lack of air at the sight of my perpetually-upbeat friend so frightened and unsure. "It's not you. It can't be you. It's some other Alice. We just need to find her and figure out what's going on. We'll find her, Ali, I promise. Anything else you can tell us?"

"I don't think so. That's it. Except...except there's a desk in the dream, and it's got a bunch of computer stuff like monitors and keyboards. And the desk calendar says '19 Décembre, 2009' on it. I thought it was funny, because who uses a desk calendar anymore?" She gave a weak chuckle. "And the Europeans put the date in front of the month, which I guess is why I noticed it in the first place, because that always looks strange to me."

Edward was pacing around, trying to absorb the information. "It's not a hell of a lot to go on, that's for sure. But if the date in the dream is right, we've got two months to sort it out."

Alice arched her eyebrows in shock. "Wait—you believe me? You don't even know me. I'm in a psych hospital, for crying out loud."

He pulled the corners of his mouth down, acknowledging the unusual nature of things. "True, very true. But Bella believes you, and I believe Bella, so none of the rest of that stuff really matters. Furthermore, this is good sport now, so I'm in. I love a mystery, especially one in which everything fades to black and people disappear."

Alice eyebrows stayed right where they were at the top of her forehead, but she raised them at me now. "Who the hell is this guy, B?"

"Well, he's my new co-anchor. Dan died, and the network is giving Edward and me the six o'clock desk." And tired, anxious, unnerved Alice actually put everything she was thinking and feeling aside in order to squeal a little congratulations for me.

"Don't get too excited," Edward laughed. "I'm an irregular pain in the ass." But he looked at me and grinned, and I couldn't help smiling back at him, because in that moment, none of the "sweetheart"s and "Mary"s and mind games he played outweighed the simple fact that he was here with me, helping me help my friend.

The look on my face must have made him uncomfortable, because he grimaced. "Okay, okay, that's enough. I'm pretty sure the phone situation isn't enough to keep Shelley out of our hair forever. Let's talk next steps and get out of here."

"I'm not leaving," Alice said firmly.

"Ali, come on, you can't stay here. Let's spring you and get you back home. You can stay with me."

She grabbed my hand between both of hers. "B, I can't leave now. I can't. I know that as long as I'm in here, I can't be in Switzerland. Jasper'll take care of me. If I'm in here, everyone's safer."

"Hey man," Edward said, addressing Jasper. "I don't want to pry, but do you mind telling me exactly _why_ you're in here? No offense."

Jasper shook his head. "It's a legitimate question. PTSD. I got a medical discharge in '06 and was sent to Walter Reed, but then I got folded into this Cornell study and transferred up here." He looked Edward in the eye as he spoke, and his voice was calm, but Alice reached for his hand to quiet the slight trembling there. "I'm not violent," he said quietly, and Alice's hand traveled from his fingertips up his forearm, until it wrapped itself around the top of his bicep. "I've had enough violence to last me several lifetimes."

"So you're voluntary, right? Do they let you out on a regular basis?" A plan started to form in my head. If I could meet up with Jasper, staying in touch with Alice would be easier, and we could pass information back and forth without having to resort to breaking in here every time we needed to talk.

"Yeah, I'm voluntary. I never ask for passes because I don't really have anywhere else to go, and now that I've met Alice, there's really no place else I'd rather be." She cuddled herself into his side, and he wrapped a protective arm around her.

"Start asking for passes. Saturdays work for you?" We agreed that Saturday mornings were our best option, and settled on the diner in town as our rendezvous spot because Jasper didn't have access to a car.

"Time's up, kids. Let's say our goodbyes and get a move on."

Alice and I hugged each other tightly, and I whispered promises into her ear. "Try to sleep, Ali. I won't let bad things happen. Just take care of yourself, okay?"

She sniffled into my hair and sighed. "Oh, B, I miss you. I miss my life. I just want this whole thing to be over so that Jasper and I can walk out of here and never look back." She smoothed the hair at the back of my head and looked up at me with a bit of her customary sparkle before returning to whisper in my ear again. "Edward's a piece of work. He's also a piece of art, in case you hadn't noticed. Watch your step, B."

"Remind me to tell you how I humiliated the ass right off myself before we'd even been introduced," I muttered. "Classic Bella. You'll love it." She gave me a watery giggle. "Love you, B. Thank you. Don't do anything crazy. And don't worry about me. I'm fine here, I promise."

I pointed at my chest. "Crazy? Not a chance. We'll talk soon, Ali, or write soon. Until then, rock out at basket-weaving and stay away from the green jello."

Edward handed Jasper the E.M.P. device. "Just in case - don't go waving it around defibrillators, though. It'll work on the locks on the unit, by the way."

"Hey, thanks," Jasper said. "Won't you miss this?"

Edward smiled. "The Yugoslavs hand them out like dinner mints. I've got two more just like it at home, including one that comes in an orange case with plastic ladybugs on it."

They shook hands, and then Jasper and Alice crawled back through the window. I slid it shut after them and turned to face Edward. "Thanks," I said, because I wasn't sure what else I should be saying, and I meant it.

"Don't thank me yet - we still need to get out of here. I think Shelley's making plans to jump me and hog-tie me to one of the chairs in the lobby. If I don't make it back, tell Peter I'm leaving him Tanya in my will."

"Call her Mary and see where that gets you."

He rubbed his hands together. "Sweetheart, I'm pretty sure I could call her Steve and she wouldn't care. Let's get moving." He cracked open the door and we started off down the hallway back to the reception area. My heels clicked across the marble floor, sounding like little gunshots every time I took a step. Edward clapped his palms to his cheek in mock surprise. "See, if you're going to sneak around, it helps to wear _really quiet shoes_," he whispered with sarcastic exaggeration, pointing down at his sneakers.

"Fine. You're a genius and would make an excellent criminal. Move," I whispered back, adding "I picked the lock," because I had to remind him that I wasn't a useless bystander here.

"Heh. You called me a genius. About time, too." I couldn't immediately answer him, because we'd reached the reception area. "Fake sick," he whispered, so I slumped weakly against the wall and half-closed my eyes.

Edward bounded over to Shelley's desk, where she was eying us both with suspicion. "Oh, Shelley, I'm sorry," he breathed, chasing the suspicion from her face and replacing with a vague, glassy look. "My colleague here is obviously still a little hung over from whatever sin she got up to last night at happy hour. Such a drag, but I'd better get her home. We'll be back on Thursday, probably. Will you be around?"

She nodded in an odd sort of round motion, as though her eyes were following a spiral pattern. "Sure," she said, and Edward delivered the coup de grâce with another Smile of Death.

"Great! Okay, see you Thursday, then. I hope your phone situation gets solved." He tapped the ledge in front of her desk twice, and then huffed an exasperated sigh as he turned to lead me away from the wall and out the door.

"You're lucky that Judy person from marketing didn't decide to pursue a career as a receptionist," I snorted at him. "You might have had to work for a change."

"Hey, being this charming is extremely hard work," he countered as he bounced down the steps toward the visitors lot, looking for all the world like an overgrown kid. "That was fun. You feeling better now?"

I considered the matter as I fished around in my bag for the car keys. "Well, Ali's safe, and I trust Jasper, so that's good. But I still have to find someone else named Alice in a basement in Switzerland before a bunch of French people die or disappear or something, so I can't say the situation's been resolved to my satisfaction."

I hit the button on the remote to unlock the car doors. "Small change," he grinned. "How hard could this be? It's not like her name is Heidi. There have to be, like, a million Heidis in Switzerland."

We slid in the car and I backed us out of the space, pointing Saabie toward Manhattan once more. "Two months," I said, more to myself than to Edward. "And it's not as though these are going to be particularly busy months for me, right? I'm just kicking off the biggest thing that's ever happened to my career with—" I suddenly remembered that he was in the car and snapped my mouth shut on the thought I was about to express. The thought, and the fear. He knew more than enough as it was.

Edward's hand gripped my shoulder. "Hey. I know I'm not easy, okay? It's really not about you, if that's any consolation. In fact, it's less about you than it's ever been for me before."

That made me tilt my head in his direction. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" The cryptic way he circled whatever was going on in our partnership infuriated me, and because of the unwilling attraction I had for him and ignored as much as possible, everything he said flipped automatically in my mind to the most negative meaning imaginable.

A low, frustrated noise escaped his throat, and he released my shoulder. "Forget it. Just—no matter how it sounded, it was actually a compliment. I've never had less to blame another person for in my life, is what I'm saying. This time, it's all me."

We spent the rest of the drive in an uneasy silence, and I dropped him off at his building before heading back to mine. Edward wasn't blaming me for something, which I supposed was a good thing. I wasn't making whatever it was about him worse, but I sure wasn't making it better, either. There was a part of me that would have been willing to accept the blame if it also meant that I got some of the credit, too.

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A/N - Thank you all so much for your fantastic reviews and recommendations! You make the effort worthwhile, and I'm so grateful for your support and encouragement.

The lovely russreader makes sure that Tanya's curses are appropriately foul.

E.M.P. = Electromagnetic Pulse.

PTSD = Post-traumatic stress disorder


	9. Radio Static

# # #

Radio Static

Very little guesswork was required to determine the precise moment at which Emmett had stepped out of the elevator and onto the bullpen floor on Monday morning.

"Men of Sherwood," he bellowed, plainly audible through the open conference room door. "I am returned. Fetch me a leg of venison and your finest mead."

The noise which greeted this outburst was overwhelming, causing Edward to look up from his laptop with a confused expression. I jumped out of my chair without bothering to explain why and faked left around Marcus to greet the Great Field Leveler. Emmett was surrounded by the entire population of the newsroom, and they were all clapping him on the back and laughing. He spotted me as I made a path toward him, and knocked several well-wishers out of the way to grab me in an ursine embrace.

"Hey, little girl," he chuckled against my cheek. "I'm here to make sure you're not taking candy from strangers. Or stealing any from babies."

I squeezed him in return and then slapped his shoulders in a silent plea to have him release me. "Thanks for saying you'd do this, Em - I really appreciate it."

He slid me gently back down to the ground. "No problem. Where's the Pulitzer Kid?" I jerked my thumb in the direction of the conference room, where Edward was leaning up against the doorframe, watching the welcome wagon in action. Emmett nodded in his direction, and Edward returned the nod with a neutral expression on his face before he strolled over to join us.

"Hello, Cullen," Emmett grinned. "Emmett McCarty." The two men shook hands as I watched along with the rest of the boys. Emmett looked him up and down. "So, where d'ya keep your medals?"

"Box on a shelf in the hall closet," Edward answered calmly. "I _think_."

Emmett nodded again. "Classy. Nice to meet you." He stared briefly into Edward's eyes, sending him a message which I imagine contained the information that medals meant nothing to him, before turning back to me with an affectionate smile.

"So, Sheba," he said, gesturing behind him at the boys in the bullpen. " Your new kingdom pleases you? Your peons look dirty and more than a little stupid, to be honest." Tyler took the opportunity to toss a rubber-band ball at the back of Emmett's head, which Emmett then picked up and flicked into Edward's surprised hands. "Go on," Emmett encouraged. "Take him down like a duck in a shooting gallery. He needs to remember his place."

Edward bounced the ball thoughtfully on the inside of his left forearm a few times, catching it with his right hand while he shifted his appraising gaze from Emmett to Tyler. "Seems to me that the chair was empty when he sat in it," he finally said, lobbing the ball for Tyler to catch. "And since it's not my ass looking for a seat, I figure it's not my fight, either."

Emmett and Edward regarded one another carefully for another moment before Emmett broke out into a grin. "You're pretty slick for a show pony, I'll give you that. Of course, I'm slick central, so this should be fun." He scanned the faces around us. "Where's Peter? He still owes me twenty bucks and, if memory serves, a fan dance in a bikini. Were you there that night, Bella?"

I nodded, remembering the unofficial Christmas party at Donovan's two years ago. "Please don't hold him to it, Em. Nobody needs to see Peter in a bikini."

"Fuck that. A bet's a bet."

"Peter's wearing bikini?" Tanya strolled into our gathering. "I will lend him mine. Is purple with gold coins on the hips." Emmett took her in with his eyes as she rolled the word "purple" off of her tongue, making it sound filthy and far more interesting than any color should actually be. "Who is this big mountain of man? You block the sun."

"Yeah, but I radiate my own special light. Emmett McCarty - Bella's producer," he introduced himself. "You're new," he added after a brief and appreciative pause.

Tanya eyed him speculatively. "I'm not _that _new," she answered, conveying several layers of fact in the brief response. "You know Bella before this? How you know her?"

Emmett laughed. "Oh, I like you already. Edward's producer, right? Jesus, remind me not to underestimate him anytime soon. Okay, give me the topline; where are we going, and what do we need?"

The four of us headed down to D.C. the following morning to buzz through the sit-downs we'd negotiated for the health care reform piece, and I discovered that the world of an evening news anchor was a far different one from the world of a staff reporter. We flew first-class on the Delta shuttle out of LaGuardia, and were met by a driver at Reagan International. Edward and I spent our time on the flight going through notes and prepping for the round of sit-downs, while Tanya and Emmett sat directly across from us, apparently forging some kind of unholy alliance. By the time we were on the final approach, the pair of them were laughing way too loudly for an early-morning commuter flight, and seemed to have developed a pretty decent camaraderie. It irked me that they were able to slip so easily into a tandem work harness, while Edward and I were still fairly tense with one another most of the time.

I wasn't sure what I wanted from Edward. Friendship would have been nice, but I couldn't even define what lay between us as such at the moment, because just when it seemed as though we were finally rowing in the same direction, he'd do or say something to create some distance or make me regret feeling good about him. And if I was being completely honest with myself, I had to admit that I wanted to feel good about him. I probably wanted to feel good about him more than I should have, and that was something I definitely didn't want to look into too closely.

We'd booked two crews out of the DC bureau and met them at Dupont and Nineteenth, splitting into two separate groups to cover the sit-downs. Tanya sent a breezy wave our way as she climbed into the SUV bearing Edward and his crew, and they took off for the Capitol. Emmett and I kept the airport SUV and the second crew followed us to the sleek office buildings which housed several government relations agencies handling pharma and health insurance company interests.

As I watched Emmett blow through gatekeepers and commandeer conference rooms for our sit-downs, I couldn't help but smile. He'd been a balls-out reporter, but as a producer, his persuasive talents really showed to maximum effect, because the intimidation factor worked for him in this case, where it probably put more than a few people off during his days on the beat.

I slipped into the skin of a woman with questions which needed to be answered, and spent the day staring down corporate agendas and big money on a mission to keep that green in the family. Reform of any kind makes businesspeople jumpy, and these guys were trying to walk a thin line between concern for the welfare of the citizenry and careful protection of their sizable acreage of the American economy. We danced around the edges of sincerity for hours, but in the end, what was glaringly apparent as the central issue in the debate was that these companies relied upon the support of fair market value to underwrite research and development for new and better treatments. It was difficult to argue against innovation, and I came away with a new measure of sympathy which surprised me.

"I love it when you do the groundwork," Emmett grinned as we headed back to the car. We dismissed the crew with instructions to meet us at eight-thirty the following morning for the second round of sit-downs, and were both more than eager to stop thinking about the issue for a few hours.

"Edward thinks I spend too much time on research," I found myself telling Emmett, for no particular reason. In retrospect, I think I was looking to him to contradict the criticism and make me feel better about being such a priss about the thing.

Emmett slid into the seat next to mine and gave the driver the address of the hotel. "Well," he said after an uncharacteristic moment of hesitation, "you do have a habit of nailing everything down pretty tightly before you jump. I think that sometimes, you fight against your instincts, which is stupid, because your instincts are pretty damned good. For a girl, obviously."

I batted him on the shoulder. "Jesus, you're a Neanderthal sometimes. I don't fight my instinct. And nobody's ever had to issue a retraction or correction on my behalf, which is more than I can say for you. Remember the Scully story? I thought Victor was going to nail your hands to the wall over that."

He leaned over until his face was right up in mine. "I was right. You know it, and Victor knows it. The only reason we issued a retraction was because corporate got spooked by the lawyers and there was no way I had evidence that could have been presented without causing a whole lot of grief for a whole lot of innocent people. And we need to stop talking about it right now or so help me Christ, I will put a dent in the roof of this car with my fist."

"Sorry. Really, Em. I know it's a sore subject - I shouldn't have brought it up." In my haste to defend myself, I'd made him feel like crap about something which cut close to the bone, and that was stupid, and selfish, and pretty mean of me. Emmett grunted and shook his head, and we finished the ride back to the hotel in a gradually-thawing silence.

By the time we reached the registration desk, his normally-sunny temper had been restored. We checked in and rode the elevator to our respective floors, parting with vague plans about meeting later on in the evening for a drink to catch up.

I slipped the key card into my door and breathed in the anonymous sanctuary of a five-star overnight accommodation at The Hay-Adams. The room was dark and still, a welcome break from a day full of talking and tension and cameras. I was suddenly out of gas, and picked up my phone to call my ATF contact and put off our dirty martini date until my next visit, citing exhaustion. After rifling through my overnight bag and grabbing my Columbia sweats, I defugged in the shower, scrubbing away the remnants of professional me.

Forty-five minutes and one room-service Cobb Salad later, I curled up on the bed and started aimlessly flicking through the available television channels, fully half of which were devoted to C-Span. I just wanted to escape: I was full, but still felt hungry; I was relaxed, but still on edge; and I was occupied, but still bored. As I perused the room service menu for something else to eat, it occurred to me that today was really the first workday I'd spent without Edward in quite some time. I wasn't hungry, and I wasn't tense, and I wasn't bored. What I was, in fact, was missing him. And his sarcasm, and his unpredictable enthusiasm, and his Smile of Death. I briefly indulged a fantasy in which we shared a room, fighting over the best outlet plugs for our laptops while he picked all of the ham out of my Cobb salad and chastised me for not having the foresight to order a real dinner in addition to what was essentially a chopped-up sandwich without any bread.

It sounded annoying. Annoying, and actually pretty fantastic.

Huffing in frustration, I flipped open my laptop and started organizing things for the sit-downs we'd scheduled on the following day. I managed to revise some of the questions I'd asked today with the new tacks I'd discovered would yield better answers from the interviews, and did a bit of research on ordering prescription medications from other countries which didn't bear the 'research and development tax' our US-based pharma companies placed on American consumers. Work calmed me down, and it wasn't until my phone buzzed several hours later that I noticed the evening had slipped into nighttime while I wasn't paying attention.

"Where are you?" Emmett sounded impatient.

"I'm in my room - haven't left it since we got back to the hotel. Where are you?"

"Get your ass downstairs. We're in the bar. "

"Em, it's after ten and I'm in sweats."

"So what? The after-work crowd is gone - it's just us, and nobody's dressed for Sunday dinner. The bar's in the basement, and you can take the elevator straight down. Ass. Here. Now."

The line went dead, and I threw the phone on the bed. I knew Emmett well enough to know that he'd either keep calling, or just come up to the room and bang on the door until he got what he wanted, and truth be told, the prospect of having a nightcap wasn't a completely unwelcome one. The prospect of having a nightcap and debriefing Edward about his day on the Hill was even more attractive.

I spent a good few minutes debating whether or not I should change into something a little more...appealing, and then defiantly tossed my hair up into a pony tail and crammed my feet into some sneakers. I grabbed my card key, wallet, and phone, and left the room in search of a downward-bound elevator car.

The bar at The Hay-Adams was a curious affair. "Off the Record" was hidden in the basement of the tony D.C. establishment, and had for years been a bastion for political power-players. I'd been down there on several occasions over the years, but always with sources and always on the clock at the height of after-work elbow-rubbing.

When I reached the bar entrance, I gave my eyes a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. "Off the Record" was like a dark, wood-paneled cave, with warm red accents and funny caricatures of famous politicos covering the walls. The vibe was as upscale as the rest of the hotel, but there was also something cozy about this space, and I'd always liked it. The place was practically deserted at this hour on a Tuesday, and I immediately spotted Emmett and Tanya at the far end of the bar. Their backs were turned to me, and they were hooting with laughter while the bartender just shook his head and grinned.

Edward was standing in front of them, breathing heavily and smiling. I noticed two things immediately: the first was that his smile made me smile, and the second was that he was also wearing a Columbia sweatshirt. He saw me approaching and ducked his head down slightly, his smile pulling in until it was a more faint but still welcoming expression. To call it shy would have been incorrect; it was more self-effacing and less removed.

"Hey," I said when I reached them. "What's going on here?"

"Cullen was just giving us a little demonstration of his exercise regimen," Emmett laughed. "Pull up a stool - this stuff is priceless." He waved one hand at Edward while he scrolled through the iTunes library on his phone with the other. "Go on. Let's try some Jamiroquai next."

Edward shook his head. "You've seen enough for one night," he said. I saw his eyes take in the lettering on my sweatshirt, and I pointed at his to make the connection.

"I had no idea you were a fellow alum. Are you still in touch with people there?"

"J School Class of 2001," he answered, nodding, and ignoring my question entirely by posing one of his own instead. "How was your day with the pot-bangers?"

"Good. Your day on the Hill?"

Edward nodded again. "Interesting. I had to empty my pockets and sign my life away in order to get into the place, though. They're a jumpy bunch over there."

"Knock off the bullshit rundowns of your days," Emmett barked. "Jamiroquai. Found it. Let's see what you do with 'Virtual Insanity'. It kind of fits the surroundings."

"What is he supposed to be doing with Jamiroquai?" Emmett's insistence piqued my curiosity, as did Edward's apparent reluctance to satisfy the demand.

"Aiye - khot' kol yemu na golove teshi. He is stupid, pig-headed boy," Tanya laughed. "Show Bella what you do, Edward. Is very funny."

"What's awesome about it is that it should make you look like a fairy, but it actually doesn't. I'm mystified," Emmett said. "Go on. Get your step on."

Edward sighed his acquiescence. "Last one, and only for a minute or two."

Emmett slid his finger over the play icon, and the small speakers on the phone pumped out the heavily syncopated beat of the song. Edward stepped back and stretched for a moment, then started tapping his feet against the mellow oak flooring while the bartender paused to clap along in time. It took a few beats for Edward to find a rhythm he liked, but once he did, he jumped into a series of complicated, extremely fast shuffles and clicks, and I realized that what I was watching was tap dancing.

A bubble of surprised laughter escaped out of my mouth without warning, but it was quickly stifled in the next second as I watched him shake his head and practically fly across the clear space in front of the bar. The sound of his shoes hitting the floor formed the same kind of riveting tattoo which makes it impossible to stand still when a drum corps marches past you in a parade. There was something both ancient and oddly modern about the thing, and I found myself completely fixated on the sight of his feet as they pounded out half-beats and slid across the tempo, creating a second and clearly separate song underneath the acid-jazz funk of the music.

He was incredibly graceful in a very natural way. And while it was strange and unexpected, it certainly wasn't effeminate, because he danced with athleticism instead of flourish.

Tanya and Emmett might have been laughing, but I wasn't, because I was trying very hard not to be even more attracted to him than I'd been before I entered the bar.

He threw his hands up at the bridge, and Emmett reluctantly paused play. "Enough," Edward smiled. "That concludes the floor show for this evening. Don't forget to tip your waiters. And bartender," he added, as the man behind the bar tipped his head toward him in appreciation.

"Okay, what was that all about?" I asked, as he eased himself down onto the stool next to mine, and the four of us swiveled to face the bar again.

"Well," he breathed, trying to bring his heart rate down, "my mother insisted that some kind of dance was important to get me through the gangly years, and I turned my nose up at anything but tap, so there you go. I'm not a grand jeté kind of guy, as it happens - no offense to Barishnikov," he added when Tanya made a face at him.

"I get that, I guess," I nodded my head. "But why are you _still_ doing it?"

Edward grinned. "Ah. I see. A few reasons, really. It's great exercise. I can do it almost anywhere, with no special equipment. I carry all the music I need in my head, and when that bores me, I use whatever music is around me. I've danced to everything from Farsi folk songs to Congolese tribal drums. It doesn't much matter where I do it, either - I can dance in a yurt, or in a prison cell, or under a desert moon. And finally, unlike a lot of exercise, it doesn't raise the hackles of anyone around me. Some hair-trigger tempers don't appreciate the lifting of weights and the sight of a man doing chin-ups, but they totally ignore someone who's just dancing, and that comes in handy more than you'd think it might." He leaned into me slightly and raised his eyebrows. "In a nutshell, I'm less threatening this way, sweetheart."

I couldn't possibly have disagreed more, but I kept my mouth shut, and after staring at me for a moment, Edward turned to speak to Emmett.

Tanya nudged me with her elbow. "I'm little drunk. Catch up," she sighed, banging her hand against the bar to attract the bartender's attention. " You had good day?"

I nodded and ordered the house special: a Presidential martini. "Long, but good. You?"

"Your government exhausts me. Bureaucrats exhaust me. Edward exhausts me. I'm exhausted." She put her head down on my shoulder, and I was honestly surprised at how comforting that felt. "This hotel is good, but is too quiet. I will sleep if it's so quiet."

I chuckled at her. "So? Sleep. You said you were exhausted. Sleep is good for exhaustion."

She looked up at me from her perch on my shoulder, and I saw that vague melancholy once more. "I don't like to sleep so much," was all she said. Then she raised her head again and suggested a game of four-handed poker. Emmett heard "poker" and greeted that second wind like a long-lost friend, sensing some weak gazelles in the herd. Neither Edward nor I could come up with any kind of reason not to kill an hour playing a few hands. In short order, the bartender produced a pack of playing cards on which were represented political heavyweights as bizarre human/animal hybrid cartoons, and we were off to the races. The wasabi-pea bar snacks became our chips.

Tanya spent the first few hands indiscriminately peppering her commentary with enthusiastic Russian curses, not even attempting to adopt a poker-face. Emmett laughed like a maniac as he relieved her of her wasabi peas; for him, the stakes were always entirely beside the point. Edward was a cautious player, which surprised me. He never bought the flop with less than a decent pair, but would occasionally risk an Ace/ten or an Ace/Jack. I stuck with the suited connectors when I could get my hands on them and I was on the button or close enough to it, and managed to take enough of the peas in the pot over the course of time to sit very comfortably in the hunt.

At one point, I noticed Edward staring at me. "What?" I demanded, suddenly and uncomfortably self-conscious, as I invariably was whenever I found him looking in my direction for an extended period of time.

He shook his head. "Nothing, really. You just look so serious. And you grab the side of your neck when you're not sure whether you should bluff. It's a very nice tell, but it's a tell all the same. Thought you'd want to know."

"Yeah, well, you almost rub your left eyebrow off when you bluff," I retorted.

Edward grinned ruefully. "My tell doesn't sound as nice as yours. Suggest another one and I'll work on it."

The bartender announced last call, giving us no more than two hands before we had to roll it up for the night. Tanya had finally busted out two hands ago, so she anointed herself color commentator. Emmett was dealing. Edward limped in with a token bet, and I got aggressive after the flop, but he called me, which made me doubt his dead-dog attitude, so I went all in, and he promptly followed. The pot was a sizable one; at the river, we realized that we were both holding the same straights, and ended up splitting the pot.

"Ha!" Tanya shouted. "You see? Kak dve kapli vody - you are the peas in same pod. Nashla kosa na kamen', Edward. Blade meets stone."

He smiled as we counted out the peas. "I'm not as wild as I used to be, but I still know how to win."

"You didn't win, Edward; it was a draw."

Edward looked at me as he pushed a pile of peas in my direction. "Clearly, it's a matter of perspective. I didn't lose, and in my mind, that means I won."

Emmett leaned back in his chair. "Not that it matters, because the two of you are arguing over second place. _I_ won, but if I actually eat all of these wasabi peas, it won't be much of a victory for the ozone layer."

Were we arguing? Almost every conversation we had felt like a negotiation, and time after time, we seemed to reach a stalemate.

It was late, and tomorrow was going to be another long day of talking, of questions and answers and information-gathering. As much as I knew I should just let the matter drop, I couldn't. We stood up and returned the cards to the bartender, tipping him well and thanking him for letting us take up his space. As we made our way to the door, I murmured, "It was a draw," and Edward turned around to halt my progress with a hand on my forearm.

"I'm going to tell you something I probably shouldn't, because I'm in a rare mood to share. I absolutely love that you don't back down, and part of me is always hoping you'll win. Hoping you will, and frankly scared shitless that you might."

I looked up at him, and his expression was such a mix of emotions that it was impossible to sort them out, but I saw pain, and conflict, and hesitance, and tenderness as well, and the impact of all of them combined made me draw in a sharp breath. "Who are you, Edward?" I whispered. "Really, who are you, and what do you want from me?"

He slowly shook his head. "You don't know how long I've been asking myself those exact questions," he whispered back, more to himself than to me. Then his expression cleared, and the moment passed. "In any event," he continued in a stronger voice, "you should note that while I say I've won, I never said you lost. You're too literal for your own good."

"Just _stop_. Stop doing that. Stop with the non-answers, and the cryptic musings, and the hokey-pokey stuff. Enough, already. We're stuck with each other, and I'm trying to make this work, but if you keep irritating the shit out of me it's going to be more difficult than it needs to be." The angerlust was back in full force, and I had to stop my hands from reaching out to shake him, or grab him.

He raised his eyebrows at me. "I'm still irritating the shit out of you? Really? Well, that's promising. Most people give up way before this point."

"I need answers."

Edward shrugged his shoulders. "I wish I had some for you. You might just want to get used to disappointment, there, sweetheart. Believe me, I sympathize."

"Are you trying to make me hate you? I don't want to, but you really seem to be putting some effort into that," I seethed.

He pursed his lips together in thought. "I can't say that I want you to hate me, but it might not be such a bad idea for both of us in the long run if you do."

Fed up, I stomped past him on my way to the elevator.

"Good night, sweetheart," he called after me. "Sleep well."

"Go to hell," I shot back, completely ruffled and disgusted, and he laughed bitterly in response.

"Oh, I've already been. I have a bobble-head doll of Satan as a souvenir. I'll leave you to the elevator and just take the stairs to the lobby."

After a night of punching my pillow in frustration instead of actually sleeping, I plowed through the remaining sit-downs and dragged Emmett to the airport as early as possible. I sat next to Tanya on the flight home, during which we talked about absolutely nothing of importance and certainly nothing to do with Edward, who was seated across the aisle from us in casual conversation with Emmett. I forced myself to avoid looking in his direction at all costs. If Tanya noticed, she didn't comment on it, and instead kept me occupied with descriptions of an extremely-suspect security wanding she'd endured during their second trip to the Hill, and of all of the people they'd met there, asking me for background on some of them.

I listened to her with half an ear, and it wasn't until we were taxiing toward the gate at LaGuardia that she abruptly shifted topics.

"Listen to me, Bella; I gonna tell you something. Indyuk tozhe dumal, da v sup popal," she said, with a serious and concerned expression on her face, and she took one of my hands between both of hers to give it a squeeze.

I slewed my face around to meet hers and laughed in disbelief. "When are you going to remember that I don't speak Russian? What are you trying to say to me, in English?"

Tanya returned the laugh. "It means 'turkey was also thinking, but ended up in the soup'."

"Oh, my God. I'm on Mars. Seriously, is _anyone_ around here capable of making a clear and fathomable statement? Do the two of you sit up at night, thinking of new and creative ways to confuse the hell out of me?"

"It means what you think is not always right. See? You get upset, but for wrong reasons."

I slipped my sunglasses on to shut out any potential examination of the expression in my eyes. "Sure I do. But until somebody gives me the right reasons, I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

"Is fair point," she agreed, and we gathered up our things once the "Fasten Seatbelt" sign was off.

Edward and I spent the remainder of the week talking politely across a frozen tundra between us. Peter dropped in several times to see how the health care series was shaping up, and seemed pleased enough with our progress. He informed us that the renovated studio would be ready early the following week, and he wanted to get us in there for some testing and a lesson or two on the smart boards. We'd do several dry runs as well, so that we weren't walking into our maiden broadcast without a feel for how everything was going to go down.

I went to visit with Jasper on Saturday; I hadn't invited Edward to join me, and he didn't push the point beyond asking me to tell Jasper he said 'hello'. That frankly surprised me, given how adamant he'd been about tagging along the previous week, but the mystery surrounding his complaisance was solved when Jasper informed me over coffee at the diner that Edward had already made a trip out to Greymore on Thursday to check in with him, conning the hapless Shelley into giving them a minute or two of privacy. Jasper chuckled at my outrage, which only served to annoy me more.

There was no new information on Alice's dream to share, and the week had been too hectic to do much digging around for answers. We agreed to meet again the following Saturday at the same time, with the hope that my liberation from the conference room and Emmett's presence would give me more freedom to root around for possibilities.

As we were wrapping up, Jasper tapped the table gently to get my attention. "Uh, there's one more thing I have to tell you," he said. "Alice had a dream - about you - yesterday. It wasn't a bad one, though," he hurriedly added. "She said it was important, and made me promise to tell you."

"So? What was it this time? I'm going to adopt an iguana? Inherit an ice cream truck? Buy some awesome shoes?" I'd had enough experience of Alice's Bella-centric dreams to know that whatever it was, it was going to be a debatable pleasure, but the fact that she'd had a good dream for a change was already a gift in my eyes, and I smiled.

He exhaled slowly. "Don't be angry with me. I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you like she told me, okay?"

I nodded my encouragement, but the smile slipped from my face because it didn't sound as though he was about to share something silly with me.

"Okay. Well, she said to tell you that you needed to do the brave thing when the time came, and you'd understand what she meant by that, and that everything would be all right as long as you went down into the hole."

"What?"

He bit his lip and repeated himself.

"That's it? What the hell does that mean? What hole? Why is everything a fucking fortune cookie this week? Why couldn't she just dream about _shoes, _for crying out loud?"

Jasper blanched slightly while I raged, and I made an effort to stop fuming in his direction, because he was just the messenger of muddle and not its author. "She told me you'd be pissed. Sorry. That's really all she said, though - swear to God. I'd be pissed too, for whatever that's worth to you. She did smile when she was telling me."

"When you get back there, you can deliver this message to her: tell her I have the keys to her place, and I'll be spending tomorrow afternoon drawing mustaches on every single one of the pictures on her walls. In black Sharpie. And then I'm going to take a pair of scissors to her precious antique postcard collection."

"You don't wanna do that," he laughed. "She'll skin you alive."

"She's doing time in La Casa de Cuckoo. She's not going to Switzerland, and she's not coming after me."

"You know, I know it made you mad and all, but I need to tell you that it was worth that just to see her smile for a change." He looked back down at the table for a moment, and when his eyes met mine again, they were sad. "She's not smiling too much lately."

On impulse, I covered his hand with my own. "If it makes her smile, then she can be my guest anytime she wants to send you out here with her half-assed dreams which make no sense at all. But she's the only one who gets to do that from now on."

"I'll tell her you said so. And I'm gonna guess that she'll want to ask you to leave those postcards alone."

I couldn't help but smile at him, and we parted ways shortly thereafter. On the drive back to Manhattan, I tried to come up with something about my life which didn't feel as though it was in complete flux at the moment. Nothing at all occurred to me, except for the fact that I had a lot of questions, which seemed to be the only constant element in my entire existence.

# # #


	10. The Eden of Our Innocence

# # #

The Eden of Our Innocence

The new studio was breathtaking. It still smelled of fresh paint and new upholstery, and it looked like the cockpit of a rocket ship. The floor was a high-gloss black laminate, which absorbed the lights in the grid above it and made the set look like it glowed. There was one long blonde wood desk, situated slightly set-left. The desk curved in on itself in a gentle crescent-shape, and it contained two computer screens built into the surface. Unlike the prompter screens in the old studio, the new screens were touch-activated and gave us the ability to scroll around the stories within the broadcast, cueing up additional information for the smart boards if we needed it. To the right of the desk, there was a small grouping of blonde wood chairs covered in a striking jade-green microsuede. Two smart boards flanked either side of the enormous plasma-screen video wall behind the desk, and there was a third board located behind the chair grouping for use during in-studio sit-downs.

Edward whistled as we stood next to each other and took it all in. "It's like Philippe Starck designed a Temple of Gen-Y Information Dissemination. We might not be cool enough for this place."

It was Wednesday, and we'd gotten into the studio two days later than Peter had hoped, but we were finally here, just the three of us, standing in this too-quiet space which would soon be filled with lights and people and frenzy. Things were still on the formal side between Edward and myself, but our conversations were friendly enough. I was no longer really angry with him, because I'd reached the conclusion over the weekend that whatever was going on, it was his business and had nothing to do with me. It was clear that he was making a real effort to keep things professional and uncomplicated, and while a part of me deeply appreciated the lack of constant conflict, another part of me yearned to break free from the restraints of civilized interaction and get back to the place in which we were more real with each other. What I'd been seeing this week wasn't Edward, and what I'd been giving him wasn't Bella, and we both knew it, but neither one of us seemed to be willing to risk anything more at the moment. Not with so much on the line. Not with so much pressure to make this work. Still, being around him like this...it bothered me. He was smooth, and pleasant, and left no chance for me to find any kind of traction. Or answers.

"Have a seat," Peter encouraged. "Let's check out the effect."

We walked around the desk, and, as promised, Edward claimed the camera-left chair, grinning slightly to let me know that the conversation we'd had was fresh in his mind as well. I took the right chair, which settled under me with a soft hiss as the pneumatics automatically adjusted to my size and weight.

"So?" Peter prompted after we'd taken our places. "How's it feel? Good? Are we the hottest anchor team on television yet?"

Edward and I both laughed. "We're not on television yet, Peter," I said.

"Four days," he answered, rubbing his forehead as the realization sank in. "You go live on Monday. Four days. And the control room's not set up yet, and you need training on the smart boards, and we should do at least a dozen tech runs between now and Friday alone. Four days."

Edward lightly tapped his fingertips against the desktop. "No time like the present to get started, then. What's first?"

Peter exhaled loudly and clasped his hands behind his neck in agitation. "Well, first, since you've never actually done this before, Edward, we should have a little lesson about being on air."

"Peter, it's not like I've never watched the news before. What's to know, really? I look at that, I read this, I speak clearly and don't go spelunking in my nose. I think I can keep up. Next?" He took his bottom lip between his teeth and executed a brisk drumroll by beating his hands against the blonde wood surface of the desk.

Peter grinned at him. "It's a little more complicated than that. You need to sell the story. There are times when Ben will be yammering away in your earpiece, and you have to learn how to talk and listen at the same time. Every time you fidget, the action is caught and magnified by the camera, so you need to sit still and keep your hands quiet." The not-so-subtle hint was apparently not lost on Edward, who slowed his desk-slapping. Peter shook his head and continued. "You're not a slouchy guy, which is good news. I'll want you and Bella to throw back to each other, but not in a cheesy way, so you need to be aware of what she's got cued up when you're wrapping whatever you're talking about."

"Wait until the first time the prompter dies, or your earpiece decides to take a vacation," I said. "That's a heart attack. Ben came out of the control room the last time my earpiece malfunctioned and practically mimed the news for me until we could switch it out during a break."

"Sounds like a gas. Did you laugh?" His impromptu percussion solo on the desk picked up tempo again.

I shook my head. "No laughing. No matter what goes on in front of you, you don't laugh. Oh, my God, you're going to want to, but you can't."

Edward continued drumming as he tilted his head at Peter. "You know, you could just get robots to do the job if that's all you're looking for. Maybe some of the bright young things at MIT can build you a newscaster."

And that was when I finally caught on. Edward was a little nervous. Edward - who'd dined with insane militants, snuck across closely-guarded borders, shared jokes with the boys in underground IED labs, and tapdanced in yurts, apparently - that Edward, that very same Edward, was just a little unsure of himself at the moment. Seeing him that way, seeing him and knowing that the nervousness probably made him angry at himself (because that's precisely what my reaction always was to any of my fears), I couldn't take the formality between us for another minute, and I couldn't stand to see this cocky, talented, infuriating man look so uncertain.

"Hey, Peter? Can you maybe call someone for the transcript from last night's broadcast? I know the control room's not online yet, but maybe we can do a little read-through right now as a warm-up," I suggested. Peter nodded his head and made his way to the door to shout the request out to whoever was hanging around out there.

Taking a major gamble, I put my hand out and covered one of Edward's to halt the ongoing drum solo, reminding myself of the time he'd done something similar for me on our visit to Greymore. "Listen to me. It's a change, I'll admit. But it's nothing that's going to really freak you out. You don't know something, you ask me. This is between us now, and we're going to figure it out as a team. You'll get the hang of it in no time. And the minute you're comfortable and feeling good about it, I'll tell the guys in control to cut the feed to your earpiece, just to keep things lively," I joked.

Edward's hand froze under mine, and his eyes immediately dropped down to study them. After a moment, he turned his hand palm-up to grasp mine, and the action made me inhale sharply, for which I immediately cursed myself. "You're really a very nice person," he murmured. "And I'm sorry I've been so - such a - well, you know. I know it's difficult to believe, but I am _really_ trying, here."

"Forget it," I dismissed it with a smile. "Let's just do the best we can with this and give Peter what he paid for. I'll stay on my side of the desk. The right side. Because I'm pretty sure I'm going to be right more often than you are."

That brought a grin to the side of his face which was visible to me. "Yeah. We're back to calling you Mary for the moment."

"Don't you dare. And judging by your ongoing torture of poor Shelley, it's entirely possible that it'll be your smile causing seizures, not my voice." I gave his hand a squeeze and released it, but he held on for another second before finally letting me go. I didn't have to ask him if we were all right again, because I knew we were, and just like that, everything clicked into place.

Peter returned with two copies of the transcript. We briefly skirmished over how to handle the lead, and Peter decided that we'd literally do a coin toss every night to determine who opened the show. Even though the control room was still dark, Peter wanted the read-through to feel as much like a broadcast as possible, so he marshaled the crew from the old studio into the new space to set up for a dry run. Within fifteen minutes, the light rig above us was hot, we were dead-mic'ed, and Walter was pacing around his three camera ops as they adjusted angles. A fourth camera hung on a track from the ceiling grid, giving the control room the ability to pan the entire studio in wide aerial shots, but that camera remained stationary for the moment.

Two of the guys from engineering had managed to patch the triax feed from the cameras to a hastily-assembled bank of monitors at the back of the studio, and Peter was perched in front of the screens, trying to hide the look of absolute glee which kept threatening to morph him from high-powered news executive to the kid with all the marbles on the playground. I nudged Edward with my elbow to alert him to the situation in the hope of relaxing him even further. If Peter was smiling, what he saw on the screens must have been working for him.

Walter should have been happy; he had a new studio to terrorize and claim, and he was floor-directing the biggest thing in news. He was still a miserable little troll despite all that, shooting me death glares and muttering to himself. The hypocrite clearly knew who Edward was, as he'd made it a point to fawn all over him when they'd been introduced, but it was clear that Walter still viewed me as some kind of insanely lucky hayseed who had no business being behind the desk. I wasn't particularly concerned with whether or not he loved me, though. If he did his job and did it well, that would be more than enough for me, and I was content to ignore the rest.

"Excuse me?" The sudden edge in Edward's voice caught me off-guard. I looked up from scanning the transcript to see that he'd leveled the question directly at Walter, who was returning Edward's fierce glare with something akin to nervous defiance. "Say that again."

"I wasn't saying anything," Walter responded. "I was just - I didn't say anything. We're ready to roll anytime you are."

Edward stood up from his chair and leaned across the desk. "Oh, my hearing's really pretty good, and I think you did say a thing or two, you chickenshit. Let me tell you something: this woman sitting next to me? She's easily smarter than you are by a factor of, oh, about a billion. Now, I just got here, so I can't be sure about it, but I'm willing to bet that she's dealt with your asinine behavior on more than one occasion, only she's too polite and professional to tell you to fuck off. Unfortunately for you, I haven't had time to get civilized and smile at this kind of bullshit. Peter?" Edward waved his arm in the direction of the back of the studio while Walter floundered around for something to say, and Peter left the monitor bank to trot up to us on the set.

"Edward, don't, really, it's not-" I started to protest, because I honestly couldn't have cared less about Walter's opinion of me, but Edward wasn't having any of it.

"It _does_ matter," he said through his teeth, and the look in his eyes startled me. I'd seen a host of expressions those eyes over the past few weeks, but never anything to match the kind of anger currently taking up residence there.

"Hey, Peter? I'm going to have to demand that you kick this arrogant piece of crap out of our nice, clean studio. It's not his job to make Bella miserable; she gets more than enough of that from me, and I certainly don't need his help."

Peter looked from Walter to Edward, and then addressed Edward. "What exactly happened? Was there some kind of misunderstanding? Walter's been with the broadcast for a long time, Edward. Let's see if we can sort this out." He held his hands up in a conciliatory fashion, and I really felt badly for him. Peter had enough on his plate at the moment without stupid, bald Walter hopping on as a side dish.

Walter started to babble in self-defense, but Edward cut him off without a second's hesitation. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but he referred to someone at this desk as a 'stupid hack'. Since Bella's neither stupid, nor a hack, I can only conclude that he's either lacking the requisite observational ability to be an effective floor-director, or he was talking about me, and I'm definitely not stupid, either. Also, I don't like the way he looks at her. If I'm being perfectly honest, I don't like the way he looks, period."

I took a momentary break from watching the action in front of me to scan what was happening in the rest of the studio. The three camera ops had stepped out in front of their equipment to get a better view of the action, and there were huge grins on each of their faces.

Peter looked at me, his expression shocked and serious. "Bella? Has Walter ever given you any reason to think he's capable of this kind of behavior? You've been working with him for over a year now."

Before I could give him an answer and diffuse the situation, Roger, one of the camera ops, decided to add his two pennies to the conversation. "He's an asshole to her every time she takes the chair. I don't know why she hasn't just hauled off and kicked his balls for him. I can't even talk about it at home anymore, because my wife goes crazy every time I say anything about it to her."

That seemed to settle the matter as far as Peter was concerned. "Right. Walter, head back over to the office and clear your shit out. You have ten minutes. I'll have one of the guys from security escort you to the door, and HR will call you about your last paycheck. Thanks for making my life so much simpler this week, by the way; I really appreciate that."

Peter put his hand out to sarcastically indicate that Walter should turn around and find the door, following behind him to level instructions at security in the hallway. When they were out of earshot, I turned to Edward. "What the hell was that all about?" I couldn't say that I was furious, exactly, but his outburst was entirely uncharacteristic and more than a little unsettling. A part of me resented the fact that he felt compelled to fight a battle on my behalf, while another part of me tilted breathlessly toward the display of uncompromising testosterone. To the best of my recollection, nobody had ever stood up for me that way before, and nobody had ever said so many nice things about me in my defense.

Edward took a moment to consider the matter, and me, and then shrugged. "There's enough going on around here without having someone like that in the mix," he finally frowned. "Why'd you put up with it for so long?"

"I put up with it because his opinion couldn't possibly matter less to me," I snorted. "He's an idiot, and what he bays at the moon is his business. I live and let live, as a general rule. As long as you're not in my way, you're free to think what you like about me. And believe me, I've had worse than him. He's a petty offender in my book."

"I think you sell yourself a little short sometimes, Bella."

"This comes from the man who told me a few weeks ago that I haven't earned his respect? That's a bit rich," I countered, arching my brow at him and pitting him against the words he'd spoken during our first dinner with Peter.

"That's past tense," he answered with a mischievous smile. "I have a sapling respect for you. Water it regularly, and one day years from now, it might be a mighty oak."

"Hmmm. Pity. I think I had some admiration growing for you as well, but it looked so much like a weed that I accidentally pulled it."

"Oh, just admit it, sweetheart; you admire me. I've seen you admire me on more than one occasion, in fact."

"Narcissist," I smirked, because it felt good to argue with him. It felt normal, and right, and real.

"Dissembler," he shot back, good humor fully restored, and I shook my head at him. "Let's get this show on the road."

Peter resumed his position at the monitor bank, and decided to call the hot camera sequence himself. Since it was a closed feed and he really only wanted to check the images for effect, it didn't matter how right and tight the whole thing looked. He hummed the show intro, much to the amusement of everyone in the room, and then cued me to take the lead.

The transcript naturally didn't include throw prompts, so when I was done with the lead, I simply looked over at Edward to let him know that he was up. He quietly cleared his throat, gave one more glance at the script in front of him, put it down on the table, and regurgitated the next story word-for-word without looking down at the sheets again. His voice was strong, and mellow, and smooth, and he delivered the piece with emphasis and assurance. There was authority in the delivery, but he was also prone to raising his eyebrows as he spoke, and that was something he'd need to get a grip on.

We ran through the transcript twice, switching who took the lead. Peter would occasionally shout advice from behind the monitor bank, but for the most part, we were ducks on a pond. It just worked.

"Odd that we don't make any real mention of increased security for the run-off elections in Afghanistan," Edward commented after we'd wrapped the second read-through. "There must be some troop redeployment going on."

"Maybe they don't want to make it look as though anyone's nervous about it," I responded. "A demonstration of faith in the new democracy, if you like."

"Yeah, I get that, but still, you know they're moving the chess pieces around over there because the worst thing in the world would be to have the Abdullah sympathizers stage high-visibility or violent protests during the polling. You can't imagine how intimidated the average Afghani citizen is. Doesn't help that the UN is claiming evidence of fraud in the first election." Edward took a long sip of water from his glass on a shelf under the desk.

"It's going to be tense no matter what kind of spin they put on it. Kerry says a secure and viable run-off is possible, so we're just going to have to read between the lines there and assume that they're locking down the polling sites and providing adequate security. What else can they do? You've been there; do you think it's possible?"

"Stop," Peter interrupted, startling both of us. "That - what you're doing. I want that." He leaned against the desk, looking at us both with considerable intensity.

Edward and I both furrowed our brows at him. "What are we doing?" Edward finally asked.

"That give-and-take. It's fantastic. You stopped being anchorpeople about five minutes ago, and now you're just making educated conversation about what's going on in the world. I want that. On the show. You two need to do that a lot." He looked absolutely thrilled and fascinated.

"Peter, be realistic," I begged him. "We can't plan conversations, and we argue as much as we talk. I can't focus on a countdown to a break if I'm involved in a debate with Edward."

"Do we argue?" Edward wondered, harking back to a thought I'd had when we were down in DC the previous week.

"Bella, don't you get it? You represent the view from home, and Edward represents the view from 'out there'. You ask the questions smart Americans want the answers to, and Edward gives you those answers based on his experience of the world. Nobody else in network news has what you two have. And we're going to ride that horse, hard." He started scribbling notes on a pad. "I want to build at least one or two of those mini-debates into every broadcast. Don't rehearse them. Keep it clean. I'm going to let you pick which stories you want to hit, and it's up to you to figure out whether you want to clear them with each other first, or not."

"Hey, you want a debate, you get a debate," Edward agreed. "It's not as though we don't have a difference of opinion every now and then."

"Provided it's framed in a context of clarifying the script and not about personal opinion, I'm okay with that," I stipulated.

"No mud pit? There should be a mud pit," Edward pouted, surprising a laugh from me.

"Let's clear out of here for a little while and let the team of engineers currently clogging the hallway get into the control room to finish work in there. It should be online by tomorrow morning at the latest. We'll do some tech using the transcript from tonight's broadcast." Peter clapped his hands together to conclude his thought, and we stood up to join him on the other side.

"Later, Daisy," Edward murmured, patting the desktop in front of his chair.

I goggled at him. "You named the desk? You named _our_ desk '_Daisy'_?"

"Yep. Daisy Desk. Don't even think about changing it, because it's done." He pointed an admonishing finger in my direction.

"Why? What on earth is the matter with you?" I was torn between more laughter and acute aggravation, because he was right; once the name had been spoken, it was done, and this beautiful new desk would now and forever be "Daisy" to me, no matter how hard I tried to unknow that.

He lifted an eyebrow at me. "Hey, if I'm going to have my legs under something every night, it's definitely going to be female."

I stubbornly ignored the unbidden and completely pathetic follow-up questions my body wanted me to ask him about that, and just put my hands on my hips. "Fine. Your side of the desk is Daisy. My side of the desk is Derek, then, because I'm not interested in joining your little kinkathon just to placate you and your twisted need to sexualize everything."

"Derek? Really? You might want to rethink that choice. I mean, Daisy conjures up images of corn-fed beauties in cut-off shorts. Derek...Derek is the name of a trolley conductor."

"The shortstop for the Yankees takes issue with your characterization. And he's only dated six of the ten most beautiful women in the world," I shot back. "Also, Daisy is what lots of farmers name their cows, so the corn-fed part of your fantasy is probably accurate, at least."

"People," Peter interrupted, clearly exasperated. "Can we do this walking, please? I'm pretty busy these days. I need to figure out how I'm going to get a new floor-director in here in the next two hours. The fact that your desk is now some kind of anthropomorphic hermaphrodite is surprisingly low on my list of priorities at the moment. Not that it's not entertaining on some level to hear you hammer out the treaty on the subject."

"Right. Sorry, boss," Edward said.

"Ugh. It sounds so toadying when you say that," I couldn't help informing him.

"Toadying's good for me," Peter offered helpfully. "I like the toadying. As much as possible; seriously, whatever you've got. And let's walk. Your offices are ready, so you can bid a fond farewell to the conference room."

We followed Peter back to the fourteenth floor, where he led us to our new office suite. It was a large space, occupying an entire corner of the wall on the far side of the floor and radiating out against either side of that corner for a good twenty feet.

"Before either of you ask me about it, neither one of you got the corner, because I just didn't have the strength to argue about it. Your secretary gets the corner. The other two spaces are identical, so I'll let you pick which-"

"Left," I immediately said, pointing at the office to the left in triumph.

"Crap," Edward groused. "I'll get you back for that."

"Was it a mistake on my part to encourage debates between you two? I wonder how history will judge me," Peter shook his head. "Let's get in there; I want you to meet the poor woman who drew the short straw."

He opened up the double doors leading to the corner of the office suite, and we followed him inside.

A large and impressive desk was situated kitty-corner against the bank of windows which filled the room with early winter sunshine and provided a panoramic view of the cityscape around and below us. Although work on the office had only been completed this morning, there were already several large goosefoot and Chinese evergreen plants taking up residence around the place. An attractive woman with long, auburn hair and rimless glasses sat behind the desk fortress, and looked up from her computer monitor as we entered.

"Ah, Kathy, right?" Peter half-guessed, and she nodded solemnly. "I'd like to introduce you to Bella and Edward, if you've got a moment to spare for us."

Kathy shifted herself to stand, grabbing a steno pad and a pencil as she moved forward to shake our hands.

"Hey," Edward said cordially. "It's nice to meet you. Uh, you should know up front that I've never had a secretary before, and the only thing I know about them is what I've seen on tv. So I have no idea what you're supposed to be doing, in other words. I like coffee, if you do that. I'm a pain in the ass, but I'll do my best to keep it to a minimum. I can't stand having people hover over me, so don't hover, and stay away from anything on my desk, because if you try to straighten it up, I'll probably kill you, or at least scream and get mean. I need a bunch of really loud clicky pens, a stack of Ampad Gold Fibre legal pads - the big ones - and a large piece of linoleum, at least ten by ten."

Kathy blinked and looked around at Peter and myself before turning back to face Edward. "Linoleum?" Her voice caught the N train straight back to Queens with that one word, and I felt her pain.

"Linoleum," Edward nodded, carefully enunciating the word. "You're not, you know, slow, or anything, are you? Because if you are, we're going to have to rethink how we operate. I'm not judging; I just need to know."

"Edward, knock it off," I said, moving forward to block him off from terrorizing the poor woman. "Hi. Don't let him upset you; he's really not as awful as he sounds. I think. Anyway, I've never had a secretary either, but I'm pretty low-maintenance. I just need a big cork board, a bunch of index cards in different colors, some thumb tacks, and a decent desk lamp with a goosneck."

"Right," Kathy said as she scribbled. "Okay. No problem. Now, you," she turned back to face Edward, "you're not getting the linoleum until I know what it's for."

His eyebrows met his hairline. "So it's like that, is it? Fine. I can't tapdance on carpet, obviously." He said this as though he was disappointed the woman hadn't already assumed as much about him, and the expression on both of their faces made me laugh. It didn't matter to me if Kathy never did a single thing to help me in any way; as long as she could stand up to Edward without succumbing to the Smile of Death, she was all right in my book.

Peter cleared his throat. "Welcome to my world, Kathy. The prescription plan for employees covers Prozac, in case you were wondering about that, and really, who could blame you? Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a floor-director to steal from somewhere. I'll see you two around five tonight and we'll head back over to the studio to see of the control room is up yet. Don't leave until I get back here, and don't you dare make Kathy quit, because I don't have time to find someone else."

We regrouped with Peter later on that afternoon, but not before every single one of the boys in the newsroom had left their mark in my new office. They came bearing bits of the bullpen with them, including two of the casters from Paul's office chair and a bobble-head figure of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Newton gifted me with a box of ancient granola bars from one of his desk drawers, along with an open fifth of Meyers Rum. "It's what's for breakfast," he joked.

Emmett and Tanya caused a stink in our reception area until we informed Kathy that they were free to come and go at will, without being announced. "She is like Kazachy Polkovnik in this office," Tanya complained. "I need to bribe her with something nice, maybe shoes."

The control room wasn't finished at five, so we finally bailed after two more run-throughs. By Thursday morning, some of the boards were active, so we did a little level testing and they managed to cue up some video on the plasma screen wall behind us. We moved from Daisy/Derek over to the chair grouping, and conducted a mock interview with a very confused studio page, who looked to be all of seventeen years old and scared as hell that we might experiment on his brain.

True to his word, Peter had stolen a floor-director from the network's morning show, and much to my delight, I saw that it was Rose Hale. Rose had been with the network for about as long as I had, and we'd bump into each other at company-wide functions on a regular basis. She was incredibly deadpan, but all of the camera ops not-so-secretly lusted after her, and she worked that to her advantage without being trampy at all. Edward experimented with the Smile of Death on her, but she merely snorted in his direction and stuck out a cool hand for him to shake.

"Definitely losing your touch," I muttered in his ear.

"Quit trying to make me paranoid," he said out of the side of his mouth. "I didn't give it the gas; I'm just trying to make friends."

"Sure you are. This is why you smile that smile at all the men who walk in here, right? I'm going to start wearing a garlic necklace around you, and carrying a wooden stake," I threatened. "Does anything work to repel you?"

He frowned. "That probably depends on who we're talking about. Do you want to repel me?" Some fleeting emotion flashed across his features and then disappeared into a sober corner. "I'm sorry, Bella. Ignore me. I get carried away sometimes. But I promise you this much: when I smile at you, I always mean it."

The effect this little exchange had on me was nearly catastrophic, and I fought to regain some composure. To know that the smile I got from him was different from the smiles he gave to other people was...well. Putting too much stock into a comment like that given our circumstances likely wasn't the smartest move, and so I chose to convince myself that the smiles I got were the smiles of a true colleague, a partner in the madness upon which we were both currently poised.

Another long and grueling day of tech runs followed. We barely broke for lunch, Peter flinging a standard sandwich tray in the general direction of the assembled company and telling us we had fifteen minutes to make a meal out of it. Rose and I left the deli meats to the men, and had our pick of the grilled vegetable options, catching up and settling in with one another. I loved that she was so no-nonsense, and suspected that she and Tanya would shortly become as thick as thieves. Emmett was a little heavy-handed in his approach, but his charm was considerable, so I wasn't entirely pessimistic that he'd find a friend in her, too.

I crawled home at eight, exhausted from the constant pressure of knowing that come Monday, everything was riding on whether or not Edward and I could pull this off and make it look easy. I hadn't spent more than ten minutes total in my new office; I hadn't seen natural light in at least four days; I hadn't had a moment to devote myself to solving Alice's troubling mysteries. My cell phone contained at least three messages from my mother, none of which I'd had a spare minute to return.

Ignoring everything, I peeled down to my underwear and collapsed into bed, curling up on my side and barely managing to set the alarm on my phone before slipping into unconsciousness. The sleep was a deep one, but not a long one.

At 2:27 AM, my phone's shrill ring pitched me out of sweet oblivion and into extreme disorientation. I grabbed for the phone with my eyes closed, dropping it on the floor, cursing, and then finally locating it to either shut off the alarm or break it into tiny pieces. The ring stopped just as I picked it up, and grunting, I pulled it into bed with me, preparing to lose myself again until the next time it decided to make a pest of itself. Just as my eyes began to close, the ringing started in once more.

Because I was barely functioning, it took me a good few seconds to finally realize that instead of a malfunctioning alarm alert, there was a call coming through. I poked the "talk" icon and mumbled "Whahumm?" at whoever had the unmitigated gall to be calling me at this insane hour.

"Bella, it's Peter. Sorry to wake you; I need you to pack a bag and get back to the office ASAP. I'm sending a car. We've got news."

In my stupor, I had a difficult time making sense of anything he'd said, so I slapped my cheek a few times to wake myself up. "What's going on? Where?"

Peter's voice was grave. "A family of EF5 tornadoes tore through Kansas and Missouri about two hours ago. It's massive destruction; Katrina-scale destruction. The NOAA is estimating anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000 square miles of damage, and the early estimates from the Red Cross are hundreds, if not thousands, of dead and injured. They've never seen anything like it before - it's a hundred-year storm. All hands on deck. The car will be at your door in ten minutes, so pack fast." Peter hung up, and I struggled to clear my head and jump into action.

With no time to take a shower, and no real idea of what Peter was looking for me to do, I threw on a pair of jeans, some thick socks, a pair of hiking boots, and a t-shirt under a fleece. I jammed some underwear, socks, sweats, and jeans into a bag, then tossed in a few turtlenecks and my toiletries. The turtlenecks would serve if I was manning the desk, and Charlotte would just have to make me look presentable despite the bed head I was sporting. Maybe I could use the shower in Peter's office.

I stumbled down to the lobby and found a town car waiting for me at the door. We sped through the empty streets to the office, and I tried to shake the exhaustion from my body so that I could focus on the task at hand. The overnight guard at the security desk waved me through as I shoved my pass under his nose, and I jumped into the elevator to make my way up to the fourteenth floor.

The bullpen was crazier than I'd ever seen it; people were stepping over each other to get at phones and computers, and there was a lot of frantic yelling as new data and details emerged. Emmett caught my elbow when I was halfway across the floor on my way to my office.

"Come on; we're in the conference room," he said, pulling me down the corridor to the open door.

As we got closer, I could hear Peter and Edward arguing with each other. "But there's no need for both of us to be there," Edward was saying. "Or at least put her in Kansas City. I'm sure that's where they'll be setting up the comm centers."

"Well, it's not really your call to-" Peter said, abruptly cutting himself off as he saw Emmett and me standing in the doorway. "Bella," he continued. "Sorry; I know you're tired. Get in here and let's work out logistics."

I crossed over to where he and Edward were standing, a knot of painful disappointment and hurt settling just under my breastbone, making it difficult for me to breathe. I didn't have to hear the entire exchange to know that Edward was trying to convince Peter not to send me into the zone, and that knowledge stung as few things ever had in my entire life. I'd thought we were really getting somewhere. I thought he was developing some measure of respect for the work I'd done and the proof I'd offered that I was a dedicated, seasoned professional. Clearly, the smiles hadn't been genuine, and the compliments had been lip service paid to deadweight partner.

Emmett and Tanya were on their phones, but listening in to our conversation with their spare ears. I focused all of my attention on Peter, who had spread out an old Hammond Road map on the table and was marking off the area affected with his hands. "Okay, here's what we've got: the tornadoes - the NOAA is telling us four separate ones, each within about a mile of each other - formed somewhere around Great Bend, Kansas, which is here. By the time they hit Lyons, over here, they were EF5s with sustained winds in the 215 mile-per-hour range. The tornadoes stayed in a roughly linear formation as they wandered east, occasionally dropping down to EF4s and then picking back up again. They blew over Cottonwood Falls, then veered slightly north toward Ottawa, before finally dissipating somewhere around Harrisonville, Missouri. Start to finish, it's about two hundred and fifty miles in total, but the areas which saw the greatest damage are likely between Lyons and Ottawa.

"We've got one of the corporate jets fueled and ready to go at Teterboro, and Emmett found an airstrip just north of the path in Herington. A satellite truck from our affiliate in Topeka is on its way to the airstrip now, and Tanya's been in touch with one of the local producers to get a hold of some additional ground transport. We'll station the sat truck somewhere just north of the action to stay out of the way of EMS and the Red Cross. The President issued a State of Emergency about a half-hour ago, so the National Guard is on its way as well, and we don't want to make whatever it is they've got to do more difficult for them. There's no power, no water, and no cell service anywhere within the affected area. You'll need to take MREs and the satellite phones with you in order to stay in touch; we've also got some long-range walkie-talkies as a backup, but they're really only good within a few miles, so stay close."

Although I hadn't actually looked at him, I could see that Edward was practically jumping out of his skin. "Can I just say again that I really don't think this is the smartest way to handle things? If one of us was in Kansas City, we'd be right on top of-"

"Enough," Peter interrupted him. "I don't know what your issue is, Edward, but you'd better get over it in a hurry. Unless Bella gives me a really compelling reason as to why she can't go, she's going. The staff in Topeka and Kansas City can cover the comm center briefings right now. I want you both on the ground. It's not the introduction we were planning, but hey, that's the news. It doesn't wait until you're comfortable at the desk; it just keeps right on happening, and you need to roll with it. Bella?"

"When do we leave?" Every nerve in my body seemed to twitch as I said the words, half of them in betrayal, and half of them in horrified excitement.

"That's my girl," Peter nodded. "You're wheels-up at 5:50, so we need to get you people over there in about an hour. Debrief the guys in the bullpen, and then I want the four of you to figure out a plan of attack. You've got two cameras and two sound guys going with you; any additional personnel, you're going to have to pull from Topeka or Kansas City. Edward," he cautioned, turning back to face my co-anchor once more. "I want you to work out whatever the hell is going on in your head with Bella before you get on that plane. Clear?"

I looked up at him for the first time since I'd entered the room, and watched his jaw tighten as he gave a brief nod. Without another word, Peter left us to our own devices.

I didn't know what to say, or how to begin to address the abject misery his real opinion brought me. I felt duped, and I wanted to walk away from him and never lay eyes on him again. When he didn't speak, I did the only thing I really knew how to do. I asked the question. "Why?"

He shook his head. "This is not about your ability to do the job, Bella," he started. "This is about the smartest way to handle the situation. Peter and I just disagree on that."

"Bullshit," I spat at him. "Are you afraid I'm going to break down and need smelling salts or something? What the hell is your problem? Don't lie to me; I can take it. You think I'm going to get in the way, maybe? Or that the only place I belong is in a studio somewhere far away from what's really happening?"

"You couldn't be more wrong if you took a class in how to be as wrong as possible," Edward snarled. "I'm just saying that it's not safe, and it's not smart, and there's no reason why both of us need to be there."

"Fine," I said. "You go to Kansas City, then. I'll take the zone."

"Jesus Christ, you're aggravating," he yelled, holding on to the top of his head with both hands, as though he was afraid it would fly right off if he let go. "Shit!" He released his head to scrub both hands against his face.

"I'm an adult, and a reporter. Even if you don't think I'm smart enough to handle this, as long as Peter says I'm going, I'm going, and you're just going to have to deal with it." I kept my voice low, but I knew that it was shaking with anger. And on cue, as though he'd studied ways to make me even angrier, Edward suddenly laughed.

"Maybe one day, when I've finally and completely lost my mind, I'll explain to you what makes you so hilarious to me," he gasped. "You want to go? Fine - who am I to tell you any different? Let's saddle up."

# # #

Stephanie Meyer owns Twilight and all that it involves. This particular plot and the characters in it are mine, and no copyright infringement is intended.

A/N - Thank you all so, so much for your wonderful reviews and comments and recommendations.

And now, a warning: the next chapter will not be fun at all. Really. I'm about to dump these people into an awful situation, and there will be very little to laugh about in what they find there.


	11. Little Flowers

# # #

Little Flowers

5:20 AM, Eastern

Edward and I didn't speak on the ride to Teterboro. The four of us sat, tense and silent, as the limo rolled through the Lincoln Tunnel and bowled west along Route 3 on our way to the airport. The Gulfstream G550 was ready and waiting for us on the tarmac, stairs down; we climbed aboard and stowed our gear, finding seats in the well-appointed cabin. The flight attendant had thoughtfully ordered in breakfast for us, so we started mainlining coffee and downing scrambled egg and sausage wraps.

Our crew guys boarded shortly thereafter, taking over the aft cabin section, which was separated from ours by a partition. Emmett and I sat at a small table in front, while Edward deposited himself on a couch directly behind the table. Tanya quickly stormed over to join him on the couch, but he turned away from her and pulled out his laptop. We buckled up, and the plane was airborne and climbing within minutes.

Tanya alternated between glaring at Edward and glaring at me. I couldn't imagine what I'd done to make her mad, but I was honestly past the point of caring too much about anything. After her second cup of black coffee, she stopped glaring and started speaking rapid Russian to Edward in an undervoice, becoming louder and more forceful as he shook his head at her.

"Idiot! Stupid boy! You tell it to her, or I tell it to her," she finally screamed in English, shocking both Emmett and me.

"Tanya, I mean it. Sit down and shut your mouth," Edward growled at her, furious and slightly rumpled and clearly in no mood to discuss the matter with anyone.

Emmett decided to break the tension by hum/singing "Manamana" from Sesame Street, which only served to momentarily distract Tanya from her mission, but which did force a reluctant smile to my face because it was so thoroughly insane and perfect of him. "Listen up, you two," he said after the second chorus. "I don't know what's going on, and I'm not sure I actually need to. But in less than three hours, we're going to be dropped into the middle of some pretty serious shit, so get your yips out now, because I'm definitely not going to be about your drama once we land. And where the hell is the remote for that tv over there? I want to watch who's covering what so far."

We'd reached cruising altitude, and were given permission to unbuckle and move around. Tanya hissed at Edward for several more moments, then promptly got up and came to sit next to me.

"Tanya," Edward said, his voice in the octave of menace.

She blew him a ladylike raspberry. "I am not a child. Is my story, too. You do what you want, Edward, and I do what I want. You don't want to hear? Close your ears."

Edward furiously scratched at the top of his head, then stood up and came to stand next to Tanya. "Go. You don't need to do this. I'm sorry; it's my responsibility."

They stared at one another for a moment, then Tanya clicked her tongue against her teeth again and stood up. Edward moved into her vacated seat, sliding his hand down her arm as he went. She grasped his hand quickly just before he removed it entirely and gave it a quick shake. "Is okay," she murmured, and then excused herself to retire to the rear of the plane, joining the camera and sound crew.

Emmett was still scanning the news channels to get a handle on what was happening where, but when he saw Tanya leave, he clicked off the set and moved to follow her to the aft section of the cabin without a word in our direction.

"And then there were two," I muttered, still not looking directly at Edward. He didn't speak for what felt like a long time, and so I closed my eyes and leaned back against the headrest while the plane chased the night across the states to the west of our home.

"Let me start off by saying in all sincerity that I never, ever meant to imply that I don't think you're up to the job of covering this story," he said quietly. "For someone so incredibly smart and so capable, you really do love to assume the worst about yourself. It makes me want to shake you, Bella; it honestly does. It's infuriating that you don't know just how good you are."

I sighed, keeping my eyes closed. "I don't know what to believe about you anymore, Edward, you know? Just when it feels as though we might be understanding each other, you do or say something to make me question everything that came before. One minute, you're telling me I haven't earned your respect, and then the next minute, you're telling me that you know I'm good and I don't need to prove anything to you. You hover over me on the Alice thing, which makes me think you don't believe I'm completely capable of getting the job done myself. It's not as though this business hasn't taught me to play defense on a regular basis. I've spent my entire career proving myself in ways I'm pretty sure you've never had to, and I'm tired of it. Isn't it enough that we have the stress of the launch hanging over our heads? Isn't it enough that I have to worry about whatever the hell it is that Alice is dreaming about? I don't - there's just not enough room for this, too. Maybe it would be better all the way around if we just came into the office, did our jobs, and then went our separate ways. I don't think we're really getting anywhere." I forced my eyes back open and looked up at him.

He laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. "No, well, we wouldn't be, right? Not when I do my best to sabotage it at every turn. Tell me something: what did you know about me before you met me?" He took a deep breath and waited for my answer.

I thought about the question. "In retrospect, not much, I suppose," I admitted. "I knew about your Pulitzers. I knew which stories you'd gotten them for, because I've read them all. I knew your reputation."

"Okay, so which stories won those awards?"

"Um, the tsunami. The munitions dumps in Afghanistan. Myanmar. The Tamil Tigers." I ticked the stories off on the fingers of my left hand as I spoke, recalling just how unbelievable those reports actually were and finding myself awash in renewed awe for his talent and heroism. I tried not to feel like a bug on the journalistic windshield, but going through his achievements over the past few years only served to make me even more aware of the gulf of experience which existed between us.

"The last one was a shared prize," he said, his voice tightening slightly. "I shared the prize with another reporter from the service, even though his name wasn't on the byline. I insisted that it be shared, because he was as responsible for the piece as I was." And then he just sat back, waiting for me to make the connection.

Edward's name was naturally the one everyone focused on, because the wake that he left in the world of reportage was such a spectacular, red-hot one. I mentally flipped back through the prize winners for the year, and my heart stuttered as, for the second time in our brief acquaintance, I had to curse myself for not immediately drawing a straight line between obvious facts.

"The Russian. He was Tanya's husband. I didn't know his name, because they didn't announce it with the prizes; I just remember reading about the prize-sharing after the fact." Stupid Bella. Stupid, stupid Bella, who prided herself on research, and yet failed to devote a bare minute to considering how the most important things in front of her were knotted together.

"Oleg. Oleg Kusnetsov. Tanya uses her maiden name for professional reasons." He offered no further details, and while it was clear that he didn't want to talk about it, I needed to ask all the same.

"Where - will you tell me what happened?"

Edward shook his head. "I don't have any definitive answer to that question. Things got a little hostile at the camp, and the government troops were clearly marshalling for an offensive against the Tigers. We knew we were in trouble, and getting deeper every day. We hatched a plan to hike back to Matale on the pretense of filing the story, but really, all we were going to do was to get lost there at the earliest possible opportunity.

"They wouldn't let us both go at the same time. They got really spooked, and it took us the better part of a week to calm them down. And Oleg - hell, if you think _I'm_charming, you should have watched Oleg work people. God, he was brilliant at it. But they stopped trusting us. Both of us, in the end, even though Oleg still thought he had them. Oleg and I had a huge fight; we'd been traveling around together for years, and had been through situations you can't even imagine. He was being a stupid, stubborn bastard about the thing. He went behind my back and made a deal with the camp leader. He stayed behind, and they marched me out to Matale with four guards. I wasn't given a choice - well, of course I was," he snorted. "I could leave Oleg there, or I could have him watch while they turned me into a piece of Swiss cheese with their T-56s and their AK-47s."

He went quiet again, lost in his thoughts. I didn't want to disturb him, so I just waited it out. We had two hours until touch-down, and even though we really should have been doing any number of other things at the moment, Edward was handing over a piece of himself to me, so everything else would just have to wait.

"Sorry," he finally murmured, shrugging. "I got lost for a second. Ah, so anyway, that's pretty much the end of my story. I gave the guards the slip once we got to town and hitched a ride to Colombo, because waiting around Matale would have meant dying."

"And Oleg?"

Edward shook his head again and stared out at the darkness of the night sky around us. "We'll probably never know, but it's safe to assume he didn't make it out because he hasn't been heard from since. The wire tried to make arrangements for his release, but the Sri Lankan government was all over the Tigers after the peace treaty was broken, and this past May, they finally captured the leader of the insurgents and completely destroyed the organization. I managed to get back to the camp shortly after the end of the fighting, but Oleg was nowhere to be found, and nobody had seen him walk out of there alive."

"I'm so sorry, Edward," I whispered. What else could I say? What words could possibly cover that kind of grief, and guilt, and frustration? I desperately wanted to touch him, but wasn't sure whether it would make the situation better, or worse, so in the end I decided to keep my hands in my lap, fingers twisting around one another in an unexpressed urge to comfort him.

"Yeah. So now I have a bit of a thing about people I...work with...in dangerous situations," he summed up, his voice adopting a harder edge at the end. "And I know you, Bella, better than you think I do. I know you won't keep your distance. You've never been through what we're about to see. I puked my guts out when I got to Khao-Lak after the tsunami; I don't know anyone who didn't have the same reaction, because it was totally overwhelming. There's no way it's not going to knock you sideways. You're going to want to get involved, but getting involved is _not_ why you're here. I need you to remember that, and I need you to stay safe. Please. For me."

I was saved from having to answer him by Emmett's abrupt reappearance. "I hope your little heart-to-heart is over, because we've got work to do," he barked. "Kiss and make up. There's not much local coverage coming from the zone at the moment, but what we _are_ getting is pretty grisly stuff. We'll be first on the ground for the majors, at any rate."

Edward was still staring at me while Emmett spoke. I returned his steady gaze, but couldn't promise him anything, even though I desperately wanted to make the unfamiliar and reluctant anxiety in his eyes disappear. He must have known that, because he nodded slightly and sighed, then finally turned to look at the notes Emmett had been making on the coverage to date.

Despite the speed at which we were traveling, dawn inevitably caught up with us. The pilot announced the moment at which we'd flown over Kansas City, and wordlessly, we each slipped away from fact-gathering to take up spots at the available windows. It wasn't long before we saw the damage below us, slicing across the placid face of the flat land in large, brown gashes - four distinct paths, like marks from the nails of a monster which clawed its way along an average midwestern night.

"Fucking Christ," Emmett finally breathed. "It's like an open-air matchstick factory. I can't pick out a single recognizable structure in any of the paths."

The scope of the devastation was unimaginable, and stretched as far as the eye could see. We were on our final approach to the small regional airport at Herington, and the flight attendant quietly asked us to take our seats and buckle up for landing. Tanya came to sit next to me at the table, clicking her seatbelt closed over her trim abdomen and grasping my hand in one of hers.

"He tell you about my Oleg?" she whispered, and I nodded.

"I don't even know what to say to you, Tanya. I can't imagine-" I started to ramble, but she shushed me.

"Is okay now, Bella. We talk about this later. Now you know why Edward is nervous. He looks so sure, but he is scared just like anybody to lose someone close to him." She squeezed my hand again and leaned back, shutting her eyes.

I began to wonder whether it was anyone in general, or me in particular, who caused this reaction in that complicated, difficult man, and the question of why he'd insisted on having me as a co-anchor again cycled through my thoughts. I was entirely unknown to him, and had at best been a very minor player in the larger picture of national news; why would he insist on solving for 'x' like that?

7:48 AM, Central

We touched down at Herington and any consideration other than the one at hand disappeared completely from our minds. The tidy Ku-band satellite truck from our affiliate met us on the tarmac, along with, most bizarrely, a repurposed school bus, which was painted purple and green, and a beat-up Chevy half-ton with an open flatbed.

"What in the ever-loving fuck are these?" Emmett was clearly torn between amusement and horror.

"We're your rides," said the grizzled man in the cab of the Chevy. "And I wouldn't get judgey if I were you, son. You and what you sit your ass on are not a top priority for anyone around here today."

Emmett grunted and turned to Tanya. "Flip ya for the bus," he said.

"You take the bus," she answered. "Is hideous, and all Edward will do is keep hopping out. I want sit next to my new friend, mister..." she smiled at the man in the Chevy.

"Just Harlon, no need to 'mister' me," he supplied.

"Righteous. That makes me Reuben Kincaid," Emmett clapped his hands, then tapped me gently on the back. "Come on, Shirley; let's get the kids on the bus and go find ourselves a song to lip-synch. How far into the zone are we likely to get on wheels?"

Harlon scratched his jaw. "Can't say. Not far, though. You're gonna burn a lot of shoe leather if you want to get anywhere near the center of things. Most of the roads I've been down are blocked solid with any kind of debris you'd care to name. We'll get as close as anybody can, I guarantee it."

Todd and Chris, our half of the crew, climbed onto the bus without another word. JP and George claimed their spots in the Chevy's flatbed, and Jim, the guy driving the satellite truck, kicked the engine over, idling in 'Park' and waiting for Harlon to lead us all south on Route 77 and then west on Route 56 toward McPherson, or as close as we could get.

8:34 AM, Central

After negotiating the snarled traffic on a devastated stretch of Route 56, our convoy headed south somewhere just west of Hillsboro, and got about two miles in before we had to pull over into a barren field. The silence was eerie; every tree had been stripped bare of leaves and branches, until they all looked like a Sleepy Hollow nightmare. Nearby, several cows rooted around in the dirt, looking for something on which to graze, while not too far from them, some of their herd members were dead and stacked with disturbing symmetry against the remains of a fence.

"Where the hell are we, and where are we headed?" Emmett hollered, sticking his head out of one of the buses' windows.

"We're about a mile up the road from Hackett's Acres," Harlon answered. "Or, what used to be Hackett's Acres, anyways. Good a place as any to get started while we figure out which of these roads might take us a little closer to McPherson."

Emmett hopped off the bus and fired up one of the satellite phones; he and Tanya traded the phone with one another while they discussed the situation with Peter, and it was decided that Edward and I would do a live remote from our current position before heading into Hackett's Acres. The network had preempted morning programming to cover the disaster, and our remote was quickly slotted-in to air as soon as the satellite truck was up and running. Our crews hurried over to help raise the dish on the antenna and get the comm onboard linked to the studio, and Todd handed me an earpiece. Edward and I had a terse conversation about how to handle the remote, deciding that we'd leave it to Richard to throw over to whichever one of us he felt like addressing first, with Edward fielding the data regurge from NOAA and our aerial observations, while I took whatever field-level reporting we could do up to this point, unless he addressed one or the other of us with a direct question.

Tanya updated us on the information Peter had given her about the current state of rescue and recovery efforts. The news was grim: Red Cross field operations had barely gotten underway, and already there were casualties in the hundreds, with thousands more injured or missing. Debris made reaching the hardest-hit areas slow-going, and with cellular and terrestrial communications non-existent, rescue efforts were forced to rely on what was essentially a block-by-block investigation, aided only by walkie-talkies and pure dumb luck.

The truck was firmly connected to the studio in short order, and Emmett signaled that they had audio and video on us. We stood side by side using the windswept field as a backdrop, listening in to Ben back at the old studio while he cued up Richard. I heard Richard tell the viewers that we were going live on the scene for a report from the network's new anchor team, and I took a deep breath, trying to focus all of my thoughts on the information we'd absorbed in the past three minutes and what I'd seen on our drive.

"Bella, can you hear me?" Richard's voice drifted into my ear. "Can you tell us where you are?"

I nodded toward the camera. "Hello Richard. Yes, we're approximately 20 miles east of McPherson at the moment, just about a mile north from a town called Hackett's Acres. We've spent the last hour or so making our way across from the airport in Herington, but the routes have all been heavily impacted by the massive debris field. When we leave you, we're going to head out on foot to see if we can reach town."

"I realize you haven't gotten to any of the hardest-hit or populated areas yet, but what can you tell us about what you're seeing?"

I looked around. "The first thing you notice is how quiet it is, Richard. Initially, I put that down to living in one of the loudest cities on earth. But once I stopped to think about it, I realized that the strangest, saddest reason for the lack of sound is the total absence of birds. It's the eeriest silence I've ever heard, frankly." I gestured behind me to the field where the cows stood. "And while you'd expect to see livestock out in the fields here, like the cows behind me, what you don't expect to see, and what really drives home the completely random and horrifying nature of the storm, are these cows over here, stacked like cordwood by the ferocious winds which took their lives. As for the rest, the entire morning so far has felt a bit like a lunar landing. Nothing feels like home. Nothing feels real. It's extremely disorienting, to say the least."

"Edward? We're getting conflicting reports about the ground-level relief effort. Any updates from you before we get the next official briefing from FEMA?"

Edward nodded. "We got word about ten minutes ago from a contact at our Topeka affiliate that the National Guard is mobilized on-site at Lyons and reporting that they were forced to canvas the area on foot until the bulldozers could clear a path for ambulances. The Red Cross personnel are carrying people out by hand, literally lifting them over walls of debris. At the moment, a chief concern are the ruptured natural gas lines and the threat of resulting explosions. To put the scope of this disaster into some kind of perspective for the viewer, all five boroughs of New York City combined total some 300 square miles. These tornadoes impacted between 40,000 and 60,000 square miles in an early, rough estimate."

"It's unimaginable," Richard said. "We'll let you get out there and check back in with you both in a little while. Thank you. It's a heck of a way to introduce our new evening anchor team."

I imagined Peter in the studio, prompting that final comment. Richard began cueing a conversation with someone from DC about National Guard involvement, and the red light on Todd's camera cut out. "We're out," Emmett announced. "Let's pack up and get moving. Jim, you sit tight here with our ground transport. We'll pull what we can from the field near this town and then swing back up to you when we're done to upload it to the studio."

"Give him the satellite phone," Tanya said. "I have the radios in my bag. We use those instead." Emmett tossed the satellite phone to Jim, and we started to hoof it toward Hackett's Acres.

9:29 AM, Central

We stood in the middle of what was once Hackett's Acres, but what had overnight become a veritable ghost town full of dissected homes and broken lives. The population the day before had numbered some 260 people, living in some sixty houses; when we arrived, roughly three dozen uninjured survivors were all we found wandering around what was left of their decimated town, sifting through the wreckage near their former homes to find something - anything - that might remain of the memories and precious possessions they once had. There were bodies, both concealed and revealed within the jumbled mess of timber and brick and jetsam of artifacts, and the injured, extracted by the able-bodied and suffering on salvaged blankets and sheets wherever there was room enough to lay them out.

I'd spent a semester attending a fascinating J-School seminar series on the subject of grief intrusion and journalistic integrity. The professor, who had reported on some of the most significant disasters of the past quarter-century, from Lockerbie to 9/11, discussed at length the importance of allowing people to come to you with dignity when they told their stories. The grieving often find a measure of relief in the telling of the tale, but shoving a microphone in their faces in order to capture the moment represented everything which was wrong in modern journalism.

This seemed like common sense, and the professor said as much to us. "I know you're looking at me and thinking, 'I'm a decent person. I would never force the sobbing widower or suddenly-childless mother to tell me how they were feeling before they were ready to talk about it.' Right? Well, it's easy to say that now, here in this cozy lecture space, on your comfortable chairs, far from the demands of your future careers. Wait until you have an editor or a producer who sends you out there, demanding that you bring the shock home, and bring it raw and bleeding for the sake of ratings or circulation. Because that's just what they'll ask of you, and in that moment, you need to make a decision about what kind of reporter you're going to be. It might cost you advancement; it might cost you an argument; it might even cost you a job. Just know that once you've sold that part of yourself to someone, you never get it back. In that moment, you know who you are and what you'll do to another person in order to advance your own goal. Grief isn't news; there's a steady supply of it every day. Stories behind grief are news. Never forget it."

Those words came back to me as we walked among the newly-displaced citizens of Hackett's Acres. Peter would never have pushed us to force these people to display their pain for ratings, because he was a faithful disciple of a righteous news god. But it was understood that we were on the ground to capture the scope of the tragedy, and in order to do that, we needed to build on the stories of individual loss. And so we walked on, stopping for quiet and respectful conversations with those who survived, demanding that our crews keep their cameras down until our subjects were willing to speak about their experiences. I didn't need to check that Edward was doing the same thing on the other side of the street; our job now was to draw on our ability to make people want to tell us their stories, and we both knew that.

Over and over again, survivors talked in dazed ways about their random luck. They talked about how their insomnia saved their lives, and about how the sound of annoying wind chimes or barking dogs from a now-lost neighbor's house woke them up cursing, only to alert them in time to reach their basements or storm cellars. They spoke of bathtubs on main floors, and the noise - that horrible, end-of-days roar - which signaled that the deadly wind was upon them. They tried not to wonder too much about where other people ended up, or about what came next, or about what they'd done to deserve this fate. They helped each other gather whatever they could and tended their injured to the best of their limited abilities, and we offered to drive a delegation up to 56 to wait for the help that we couldn't provide.

12:16 PM, Central

Edward, Tanya, and their crew jumped on our bus after we made our way out of Hackett's Acres so that they could look at their footage and then edit it in the satellite truck before uploading it to the studio. We did a second live remote before heading out, uploading some raw b-roll of the devastation in town and supplying some brief clips of first-hand accounts from the survivors. I knew that I was dirty and sweaty, and I could feel the telltale tingle-itch of a sizeable zit beginning to form on my chin, but given the kind of suffering we presented to the viewing audience, I hoped that they would have enough soul and character to place their focus where it truly belonged. Harlon had scouted out a minor artery with very few obstacles to the outskirts of McPherson, so we rode past plowed-under fields, blessing the lack of inhabited structures and talking quietly about what we'd seen. Updates from the comm center briefing which occurred a short time before we returned to our ground transport only provided even bleaker numbers than we'd heard this morning.

Edward taped the v.o. for the piece he was working on, including an intro from the back of the bus. He slid into the seat next to me as we neared McPherson. "Rough morning," was all he offered, and I was grateful that he hadn't asked me how I was holding up, even though the question was clearly evident in his eyes. He looked careworn, and tired, and yet still almost ludicrously handsome at the same time. What we'd experienced at Hackett's Acres was taking its toll on the entire group.

"Mmmhmm," I agreed. "These people are incredibly strong."

He scrubbed the top of his head. "I wish the relief effort was moving a little faster, frankly. I realize that the area they need to cover and the impassible roads are hampering them, but people who are alive right now are going to start dying soon if they don't figure out how to reach them in time. This is always the worst part of a natural disaster, because it's amazing that anyone survives it in the first place. Are you cutting that piece on the downed power lines?"

I nodded. "Emmett's arranging a follow-up for me with the local utilities, and Paul's trying to get an answer about generator trucks from someone with FEMA. At least they shut the grids down remotely, so there's less of a chance that anyone's going to get electrocuted now, but tonight is going to be...hell."

The bus lurched as we left the secondary road for another one which veered slightly north. All too soon, evidence of the ferocity the tornadoes visited on everyday human existence began to reappear: cars pushed pell-mell against trashed fences, on their sides or upside-down; dinner forks and aluminum siding and what appeared to be broken ceramic bathroom tiles speared into tree trunks by the force of the wind. Glass and paper and random objects were strewn everywhere, as though the city was a souvenir snow globe and someone had picked it up and turned it over to give it a vigorous shake.

We rolled into town several minutes later, and found ourselves in what looked to be the remains of a fairly-new subdivision in a gated community. The smell of propane was strong in the still air around us, and every sense was assaulted by the complete devastation. The houses here had clearly been nice ones of a recent vintage, and it looked as though an angry child had smashed and pounded them from tidy representations of an American dream into punched-down wrecks with a wall left standing here or there.

A survivor saw our convoy rumble up the street, and he promptly flagged us down, waving frantic arms in an unnecessary effort to capture our already-riveted attention.

"Thank God! Thank God!" he was screaming, and Harlon hit the brakes on the Chevy with a vengeance to avoid running him over as he jumped in front of the old truck. His thinning hair swirled wildly to the front of his receding hairline, forming a gray and brown halo of agitation around a middle-aged face pinched by panic and worry. He was clad only in a pair of lounging pants and a dirt-streaked white t-shirt boasting a logo for the Kansas State Wildcats. His feet were bare and bloody.

"Shit," Emmett muttered, hoisting himself out of his seat on the bus and leading the march up the aisle to the exit. "I'm gonna go ahead and guess that we just landed in Misery Central. Everybody had better have taken the time to load up on spare batteries. Let's go see what's up."

Edward expelled a deep breath, stood up, and turned his face down toward me. "Ready or not," he said, indicating with his extended hand that I was invited to step in front of him into the aisle.

The man in the street barely gave us the chance to step out of the door before he began pelting us with questions and information. "How did you get in? How did you find a hole? The two other roads are completely blocked, and nobody's been able to get to us all day. Oh my God, help, please. Help." He dragged Emmett by the arm as soon as he could get a hold of him, pulling him away from the bus and trying to force him to follow.

"Slow down a minute," Emmett said, but gently. "We're with ABN. We're not medical personnel. But we've got satellite phones, and we'll call the right people to let them know how to get in here."

"Are you not hearing me? There's no time! They need help, and I don't have anything - _anything_ - not a band-aid, not an aspirin - hell, we can't even find a chainsaw to start working through the mess to get people out. _Help._"

Emmett looked around. "Right. Jim, stay here and fire up the dish. Let's start pumping stuff back to the studio now that we can go live. Harlon, will you and - hell, man, I'm sorry, I don't even know your name - bus guy, uh, Connor? Whatever. You two come with me, and bring that first-aid kit from the bus; I have no idea what the hell we can do, but we can try, at least. Tanya?"

"Go. I have Edward and Bella and the crews," she answered his unvoiced question while she held one of the satellite phones to her ear. "I'm already making call to authorities to let them know."

"I'm going with Emmett," Edward said, motioning to his crew to follow him. "Spare hands, if nothing else," he added in explanation to Tanya. "You stay with Bella and her crew; we'll keep in touch with the radios."

"But-" I started to say, and he turned on me and shook his head.

"Plenty of sad stuff to go around today, sweetheart. I'm pretty sure Peter's going to want one of us to go live the minute they get the uplink to the studio, and that should be you, because you know what the hell you're doing in front of a camera, and I don't. Just - please - stay out of trouble, all right?"

"Edward," I began again, this time vastly more irritated than I was a moment ago, but again he stopped me, this time by putting his hand on my cheek.

"I know, I know," he laughed ruefully. "You want to kick my ass. Let's get through this, and I promise to assume the position and let you have at it." And then, in the middle of this impossibly tragic situation, he smiled at me, a warm and genuine smile. I realized that the Smile of Death was a pale imitation of this real and infinitely more lethal version, because this one reached his eyes and lit them with an affection and understanding which quite literally took my breath away. Before I could process it, his hand was gone from my cheek, and he was gone from the space in front of me, taking that smile along with him.

"He don't fight fair," Tanya observed as she came up behind me, shoving a fresh battery into her satellite phone. "But is first time in long time I see him really smile, so thanks you for not hitting him."

The uplink to the studio was successful; reception here was good, and the street we were on was surprisingly clear of major obstacles despite the utter ruin of the homes around us. Todd plugged a line from his camera into the onboard encoder unit, unwinding the coiled cable to give us a good range of motion. Tanya dumped the footage she'd gathered with Edward during our visit to Hackett's Acres onto Jim with instructions on how they wanted it edited, so that he could get that done after the live remote ended and upload it to New York. Chris gave me back my earpiece, and we decided to do a little walk-and-talk for the live remote in order to provide the audience with a better sense of what it was like to land in the middle of the tornado's path.

Todd, Chris and I started out next to the truck for the remote, then began a short walk along the street. Despite the fact that there were more walls left standing here than in Hackett's Acres, the situation seemed infinitely worse. I had to stop myself from shaking my head in horror at what we saw, and Tanya kept pounding Todd on his back, telling him to switch angles so that the uncovered bodies weren't clearly visible. Because there were bodies all around us - torn nightgowns, more bare feet, eyes which were open in the weak late-autumn sun, and yet no longer capable of sight. I forced myself to pause in front of one home to answer a question from Richard back in the studio; directly to my left lay a teenage boy, lost to the world, his sandy hair and freckles and pale, pale skin testament to a short life spent in front of a television screen, playing too many video games and not getting enough natural Vitamin D.

We'd walked roughly five or six houses away from the truck, and I was speculating on what this first night after the storm would mean to the survivors, when I heard a weak shout and a banging noise. Without pausing to consider the fact that we were live on air, I turned my head in the direction of the sound, and found myself looking at the remains of a pancaked, two-storey, center-hall colonial. The roof had slid off, and was now blocking the stairs to the wrap-around porch; the front wall was demolished, as was a large portion of the left wall, but the right and rear walls remained upright. The second floor had crashed drunkenly down onto the first floor on the left-hand side, leaving concrete and brick and splintered wood siding spilling out onto the front lawn, as though the house was a cornucopia of rubble.

The weak shouting continued, joined by the unmistakable sound of crying children. I could hear Richard's voice through my earpiece, now asking me directly what was going on, but I couldn't answer him because at that moment, all I wanted to do was to find the source of the sound in that house. Reaching behind me, I held out the mic, assuming someone would grab it before it dropped, and when it left my fingers, I made my way over to the house to see if I could pinpoint the location of the crying.

"Hello? Can you hear me?" I started calling, hoping like hell that whoever was in there would answer back. I reached the edge of the porch, stepping over debris. "Hello?"

"Here - we're down here," the voice finally responded, muffled below stacks of subfloor and sheetrock. "Oh, God, please get them out. I don't want them to see this."

The voice was definitely female, and definitely young. Frustrated, I looked around for a way to get closer to it, but couldn't see any easy route to take. To hear life in the middle of this deadened, dead-end street - to know that someone, or several someones - were alive, had managed to survive the storm and yet still couldn't escape - I was instantly completely committed to the goal of finding them, of making sure that there wasn't another yet another body to step around if I could do anything at all to avoid that.

"Keep talking; I need to figure out where you are," I yelled back. "Who are you? What's your name? Who's in there with you?"

"Bella, what you doing?" Tanya hissed at me, but I chose not to answer her, as I was pretty sure it was obvious to anyone who was watching. I removed my earpiece and tossed it on the ground next to me, then started to climb up the ski-sloped roof to see if I could gain a better view of what lay beyond it.

"Breanne. My name is Breanne Nelson, but everybody calls me Bree," the voice called out, then whimpered. "I'm...I'm here with my friends Caitlin, and Molly, and Jack. Their parents spent the night in Wichita last night; it was their tenth anniversary, so we stayed here and let Mommy and Daddy have a nice dinner together, right, guys?"

"We made our own pizza," offered one of the children, who'd stopped crying now that Bree and I were talking.

"Oh, I love pizza," I agreed, climbing slowly up the roof by grabbing onto the exposed edges of the dark gray asphalt shingles and whatever flashing had been exposed by the storm and the roof collapse. "Are you the babysitter, Bree?"

"Mmmhmm," she moaned, then sucked in a huge breath before continuing. "Molly and Jack are my friends from the day care center - we all hang out at Little Flowers every morning, right? Caitlin's a big girl, though; she's in first grade and doesn't need a babysitter anymore, but she said I could stay with her last night and help her while Mom and Dad were away."

I wanted to stop climbing and just cry. It was obvious that whatever had happened to Bree, she was in a considerable amount of pain, and yet she forced herself to stay calm and cheerful for the sake of the children.

I finally reached the summit of the upended roof, and was able to look down into the house to figure out where they were. At first, I saw only the scattered, broken remains of furniture and flooring. But then finally, I realized that the voices were coming from the opening where the staircase was housed. Unluckily, it was on the opposite side of the floor, so I was forced to shimmy along the roof edge until I could work my way over to the right side.

Peering down into the narrow opening, I saw the dim shapes of the three children, huddled together against the half-wall on the side of the former staircase. They appeared to be relatively unhurt, and even though they were close together, I couldn't see anything pinning them down or obstructing their movement. Willing myself to be as relaxed as possible, I smiled down at them.

"Well, hi there. I'm Bella," I said, and even though it sounded so incredibly lame to me, the children waved back. "Let's see what we can do about getting you all out of there, okay? Just sit tight for me. Can you point out where Bree is right now?"

The oldest girl raised her arm out to her side, and pointed off into a portion of the destroyed first floor which wasn't visible to me. "She has a piece of wood on her leg," the girl informed me. "We can't pick it up, and Bree won't let us try."

"Oh, God, no. No, please don't touch the wood," I yelled back, forcing my voice to lower in intensity, because I didn't want to freak them out any more than they already were. The second floor was creaking and groaning, advertising its pending total collapse and disaster. "Just sit tight; we'll get you out of there in a minute."

I swiveled my head around to look down and behind me to the street below, and saw Tanya screaming into her satellite phone while Todd kept the camera trained on me. Were we still going live? I couldn't stop to think about it. Chris stood there with my abandoned mic in his hand, looking completely confused and unsure about what he should be doing, so I chose to focus on him and ignore everyone else. "Chris! I need you to go back to the truck and grab all to triax cables you can find. Rip them out if you have to; we need to make a rope, and it needs to be a long one." When he didn't move, I lost it and screamed, "Move your ass. Now."

He dropped the mic in the middle of the street and ran back to the truck, passing Emmett and Edward, who were barreling down the street toward us at a furious pace.

"What the hell are you doing, Swan?" Emmett was livid, and I could see him shaking even though we were separated by a good thirty yards. "You can't go down there. You're the talent, for fuck's sake. We'll get the guys from the next street. Let them do it."

"I'm a human being, not the talent," I shot back. "There are three kids down here, Em. The floor's about ten seconds away from collapsing on them, and I'm pretty sure I'm the lightest body around here. Shut up and help, or go away. I don't care which." I saw Edward open his mouth to scream at me as well, and cut him off before he had a chance. "Stop. There's no option, and no time. You can beat the crap out of me when they're out of here."

Chris came jogging back with three large coils of heavy blue triax slung around his shoulders, which Edward wordlessly grabbed away from him and began knotting together at the ends, then twisting into one thicker rope. Emmett made to grab the cables out of his hand, and Edward barked at him. "I hold the rope. You want to anchor from the ground, you do that; you're the strongest anyway, so you should. But I'm going up on the roof, and I'm holding the rope."

He grabbed one end of the makeshift cable rope, winding it around his wrist several times, and then started to scale the section of roof below where I was situated. I heard him grunt from the effort of hoisting himself up to my location, cursing under his breath as he climbed.

When he finally reached me, he began to thread the cable around my waist and under my legs in a makeshift harness. "I seriously don't know whether to hit you or kiss you right now," he muttered. "It's a toss-up. Oh, Christ, look at your hands." I looked down at them, noticing for the first time that they were torn and bloody from the flashing I'd grabbed on my way up the roof. "I asked you not to do this. Did you listen? Of course not, because you have no sense of self-preservation, and you think it's fun to watch me lose my mind. I swear to God, Bella, you'd better make this quick and get the hell out of there without getting hurt. I swear to God, or I'll -"

"You'll what?" I said through gritted teeth, fighting fear, and hysteria, and trying not to let him talk me out of what I was about to do, because frankly, I was scared out of my wits. "Or you'll _what_, Edward? You don't call the shots for me, so what are you going to do?"

"You'd better pray neither one of us gets an answer to that question," he seethed, ripping off his jacket and forming a pad against the roof so that the coax wouldn't get caught in any of the jagged wood. "Go. Stick to the far right side - it looks as though there are a few load-bearing studs still standing over there."

He stood and braced his legs against the sloping roof, doling out slack to me as I gingerly made my way over to the far corner and started the delicate trek toward the hole...

The hole. And Alice's dream came rushing back to me, reaffirming, however oddly, that I was exactly where I needed to be, and doing exactly what I needed to be doing. Everything would be okay if I trusted myself and went into the hole. And with that, I willed myself to calm down and stop shaking, concentrating instead on my breathing and making my footfalls as light as possible. I reached the edge of the hole and crawled carefully over to see if I could reach the children with my hands, but they were a good ten feet too low. There was nothing for it: I needed to rappel down to where they were.

"I need to go in," I shouted to Edward.

"Of course you do," he shouted back, sarcastic and completely exasperated. "Throw your legs down first and grab a hold of the edge. See if you can find a smooth place to land the cable on the lip. I'll lower you down slowly."

"What's going on up there?" Emmett yelled. "We're just kinda flipping out down here, so whenever you feel like giving us an update, we'd appreciate it. No rush, though."

Edward updated him on the fact that I was being lowered into the hole, and I began the brief descent. Before my feet hit the bottom, I felt six little hands grabbing at my legs, and I wanted to laugh and cry with relief. But what I discovered upon landing quickly erased the desire to laugh, because now that I could see Bree, I understood that there were probably only going to be three lives saved from this house, and hers wasn't on the list.

She was laying on her left side, her right leg bent behind her at an odd angle which clearly indicated that it had been broken in at least one place. Her left leg and a good portion of her lower torso were obscured from view under what must have been a substantial column from the center of the living room area; it had obviously crushed much of what it now rested on, and I was amazed that she was still conscious. Blood was oozing from a deep cut at the top of her head, soaking her pretty blonde hair and staining it the color of suffering.

"Thank you," she whispered when she saw me. Then she made an extraordinary effort to put all of her heart into her voice. "Okay, campers, listen up: I need you to help Miss Bella get you up and out of here so that your Mom and Dad don't yell at me for not doing a good job helping Caitlin watch you. You listen to her, and do everything she tells you to do. Got it?"

Caitlin looked at her, and there was clearly some doubt in the little girl's eyes. "You coming up right after us, though, right?"

Bree nodded. "You know it, Princess Cay. I just need to wait for the strong guys to get down here and help move this log off of me. Hurry up and get out of here, so there's room for them, okay? Love you monkeys so much. Be good and listen to Bella, please."

She closed her eyes, and I swallowed my nausea to get to work on lifting the children out of danger. Caitlin went up first, so that she could encourage the little ones to follow her, and together, we managed to get all three of them topside, where their small bodies inched along the far right side of the building. Edward kept one hand on the rope to steady me as I rested at the mouth of the hole, while he carefully lifted each child over the edge of the roof and down into the waiting hands of Chris, who'd staged himself at the midpoint between Edward and Emmett so that he could lower the children down to the ground.

"Come on, Bella," Edward said when Jack had reached the safety of the street below us. "Time to go."

"I can't just leave her down there alone. She's - there's a column on her. I don't think she's going to make it." I was asking him for an alternative, begging him to tell me that there was something I could do, even though I knew that I'd pushed my luck as far as I could and the rest would be up to the professionals, when and if they ever arrived on the scene of this godforsaken mess in this godforsaken nightmare.

I didn't want to lose it. I couldn't give Bree much, but she'd done everything, everything in her power to keep those children safe and calm, and leaving her all alone in the gathering darkness went against every instinct I had. Edward studied my face for a moment before speaking, and when he did, he didn't speak to me.

"Emmett, I need the satellite phone," he called over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on mine.

"What the hell for? You two, get off the roof and get the hell down here. Now." I knew that voice; Emmett had reached the end of his patience and sounded for all the world like Dennis the Menace's beleaguered father, but Edward just shrugged it off.

"The phone. Don't make me climb down there to get it, because that's only going to make me all kinds of cranky. Just send it up. Bella's on her way down to you now."

"What?" I whispered.

"I'll go down to her. We'll call her folks. It's not much, but it's all we can do," he answered. "Get back to the truck and file the report. I think Todd's been filming the whole thing, and they're going to want you to recap what happened out of camera range."

"You can't - why you?"

He laughed sharply. "Oh, so it's okay for you to be completely off your rocker, but not me? If you're against discrimination, you need to be against it all the way. Pick a side, Bella, but be quick about it. It's not as though I'm going to make the situation any worse than it already is, and you're wasting whatever time Bree might have left."

Chris' hand appeared over the edge of the roof, brandishing the satellite phone. "Thanks, man," Edward said. "Climb up out of the way for a second so Bella can get down the cable. Then I need you to brace yourself up here and belay for me."

I don't know what made me do it, but I grabbed Edward's hand as I passed him on the rope line. "Thank you," I murmured, and felt his lips pass briefly over the top of my hair as he squeezed my hand and let me go.

"Get out of here. I'll see you back at the truck." He rigged himself up with the cable, and before I dropped out of sight, I watched him as he began to crawl on the outer edge toward the hole.

7:37 PM, Central

Every bone in my body ached, and every muscle was stiff. I'd just finished the fourth live remote of the day, and was watching the piece that Edward had cut earlier. He'd rejoined us briefly about an hour after I left him on the rooftop, letting me know that Bree had had time to speak to her mother and say goodbye. He stayed with her until she was gone, but didn't share too many details about those final moments with me, either because he couldn't, or because he knew that it would shatter my glass-fragile façade. By mid-afternoon, a Red Cross contingent showed up via the secondary route we'd used to enter the development, followed closely by medical units and a cadre of National Guard personnel trained in rescue and recovery. The three children we'd extracted from the house were given over to the care of a Red Cross volunteer, who managed to reunite them with their frantic parents by late afternoon. I followed their progress and debriefed the various aide organizations who were on location to help, running from one site to the next to capture the small view of the big picture.

I closed my eyes and listened to Edward's voice as he ran through his report.

"When Phil Walker went to bed last night, he was a typical, middle-class, midwestern man. His wife, Rachel, whom everyone had called "Tutti" from the time she was his classmate in elementary school, had already fed, read to, cuddled, and closed the door on their two kids - Patrick and AnnMarie - so that she and Phil could spend a quiet evening watching tv and eating their mostly-cold dinner on the couch in the living room of their home in the sleepy little town of Hackett's Acres. Phil worked as a parts supply salesman for a large farm equipment outfit. The hours were long, and he did a lot of driving, so he was happy to put his feet up on the coffee table and his arm around his childhood sweetheart.

"They finally called a thrilling end to a thrilling evening by turning in to their cozy master bedroom on the second floor at about eleven PM. Phil had another long day of driving in front of him, and Tutti was substitute-teaching at the local middle school, so they both wanted and needed a good nights' sleep.

"What they got instead was a never-ending nightmare, as their comfortable house was ripped to shreds all around them.

"Phil woke up to the screams of his daughter. Tutti was awake a second later, and hushed Phil back into bed with a promise that she'd find out why AnnMarie was crying and deal with it. It was the last time they spoke to each other, because moments later, one of the four tornadoes invited itself into Phil's home and destroyed everything it touched. The sirens meant to warn residents about tornado activity were in the process of being upgraded, because tornado season was months away and it was the right time of year for a job like that. They had no warning until the deafening locomotive wind was right on top of them.

"Phil's pretty sure he passed out for a while; he has no memory of what happened from the time the tornado hit and took the house, to the time he woke up in the drainage ditch at the side of his property with a broken left arm and four fractured ribs. He called out for his family, but no one answered, and when he looked over at where his house should have stood, he saw only slab foundation and a few scattered items.

"So instead of getting in his car and driving two hundred miles round-trip to visit a dairy farm in Alamota, Phil is spending today sitting, and waiting. His family is missing. His house and car are gone, along with the rest of his possessions. The only thing he's got left now is hope, and the comfort of the relatives and friends who made it through the night. He won't leave the foundation on which his house once stood, just in case. His arm has a make-shift splint, courtesy of a nurse's aide who lived one street over. His ribs are taped, but what's under them needs more than bandages before it can start to heal."

I opened my eyes when I felt someone sit down on the curb next to me, and found Edward bowing his head. He looked as exhausted as I felt.

"Hungry?" I asked him, just to have something somewhat normal to say, something which didn't involve death, or fear, or the pain of losing everything for no good reason and with no justice at all. He shook his head and yawned.

"I just want it to be yesterday, you know? I want to have the information we have right now yesterday, so we could warn them."

His simple wish brought back how ultimately useless I felt here, an unimpacted bystander bearing witness to so much tragedy. I felt intrusive, even though the more rational part of me realized that we were doing what people expected and needed at times like this; we were keeping up the flow of information. It was critical in its own way, but it still felt so trivial when compared to the people around us who were feeding, and comforting, and rescuing, and tending.

I closed my eyes again, and felt Edward's arm slip around my shoulder. "You scared the hell out of me today, Bella Swan," he said, his voice low in my ear. "You never do what you're supposed to do, and that makes it impossible for me to stay away from you. I'm getting _really_ tired of trying to."

"So stop trying," I whispered back, and leaned my head against him. "Just stop."

"I don't know if I can," he answered sadly.

Tanya's voice startled us both out of the moment, even though her tone was warm and gentle. "You go rest on the bus for little bit now. Peter wants you back for 11:30, so now is good time to take the break you need. Don't argue - just go."

Sighing, Edward stood up and offered me a hand, and the two of us made our way to the open doors of the gaudy bus, which stood bathed in the glow of generator-powered construction lamps brought in to help the rescue crews as their search for survivors wound into the evening. We climbed the stairs in silence and found a seat in the rear, shoving abandoned coats and gear out of the way to form a little nest on the wider bench. The events of the day began to overwhelm me, and the effort of holding them all inside was suddenly too much for my tired brain to manage.

"Come here," he said, and opened his arms, holding me and letting me cry myself to sleep on his chest while he rested his cheek on the top of my head and murmured soft, meaningless words of comfort into the hair he found there.

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A/N - Hello there - thank you all so much for the unbelievable reviews and support and recommendations on this story. I'm beyond flattered and thrilled by your kindness to it, and to me.

**"Manamana"** is classic Sesame Street. Oh please, if you're not familiar, YouTube it so that it can haunt you, too. It's been covered by everyone from Cake to That Handsome Devil. People will tell you that the Muppets first sang it on "The Muppet Show" in 1976. This is wrong. It first appeared on "Sesame Street" in 1969. I know because I'm THAT old. The original version of the song was featured in a mockumentary about wild sex in Sweden. You can see why the Muppets dug it.

**The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam** are a real-world outfit, formerly based in Sri Lanka. They were responsible for some hideous stuff, and are classified as a terrorist organization, although they had their roots as a secessionist movement when they began. T-56s and AK-47s are assault rifles which were favored by the Sri Lankan branch of the Tigers (the T-56 is a Chinese-made copy of the classic Russian AK-47).

**Ku-Band** is the satellite system used most frequently for on-site news gathering and live remote broadcasts. When you see the news vans with satellite dish masts affixed to the top, chances are pretty good you're looking at a Ku-Band system (although C-band is also still used).

**B-roll** is background video for a news story, in the context in which I use it here.

**V.O.** is "voice over", or the audio track which accompanies video footage where the reporter is not shown on camera.

**Khao-Lak** is a beach resort area in Thailand which was particularly hard-hit by the 2004 tsunami.

All the towns and cities mentioned in this story are real, with the exception of Hackett's Acres. I apologize to the people of the great state of Kansas for playing Godzilla in their backyards, and fervently hope that no tornadoes ever do what the tornadoes in this chapter do.

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	12. Polovtsian Dancing for Dummies

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Polovtsian Dancing for Dummies

When the Gulfstream touched down at Teterboro once more, it was late Sunday evening. We'd spent the weekend traveling around McPherson and Lyons, on the bus and in the flatbed, visiting and talking with and taking the people of that place into our souls. I felt heavy with their stories, and then again somehow lighter for having been privileged enough to bear witness to their quiet strength, their resilience, and their unimaginable optimism. Nobody we talked with over the course of our time there - not a single person - mentioned moving away and starting fresh somewhere else. The triage tents and the crowded school gymnasiums which were the new temporary addresses of the suddenly-displaced citizens were all full of talk about rebuilding. It was astonishing.

But those stories weren't the only souvenir we'd taken with us from our trip to Kansas. Something odd was definitely going on with Edward and me. Something odd, and slightly scary, and kind of frustrating in a whole new way.

When Tanya woke me up from my brief nap on Friday evening, I was alone; Edward had apparently left me curled up in our coat nest and covered me with Emmett's enormous leather jacket. I couldn't say that, given the circumstances under which I'd fallen asleep, this was an entirely unwelcome situation, because I was embarrassed and no longer had any idea at all what to make of Edward and his behavior. Being close to him - actually knowing what that was like, and how right and real it felt - made me long for it to happen again, which was practically suicidal of me. I let myself look at him, and consider unlikely possibilities, and was promptly lost in a sea of fear and self-doubt and nerves.

Meanwhile, Edward's new mission in life appeared to be freaking me out, up close and personal.

He slept near me when we slept. He ate near me when we ate. He helicoptered around my conversations with other people. He peered over my shoulder when Emmett and I were editing down our pieces. He was the walking definition of the word "ubiquitous", and yet he never said a word to me about what had passed between us on Friday, and he never let himself get close enough to me to actually touch me again. I reasoned that my breakdown had probably disgusted him on some level, or confirmed that my stomach was a bit too weak for this end of the news game, but instead of just cracking a joke about it and moving on, he appeared to waver between wanting to make sure I was okay, and wanting to keep his distance.

"What the hell is he trying to do to me?" I finally asked Tanya. "I can't even think straight anymore."

Tanya laughed in my face. "Oh Bella, you don't listen to me. I tell you already: he wants to go down hallway, he goes down hallway. You are hallway now. Congratulations."

A large boulder settled into the pit of my stomach as I considered the implications of the statement. "Uh-huh. And I take it that he's, um, been down a few hallways in his time?"

She pinched her lips together, but her eyes were dancing. "Less than Kremlin, more than White House. I don't tell his secrets. Is much better if he tell you himself."

When a second pillow miraculously appeared on the seat next to mine as we flew home, I lost my cool. "What, Edward? Just - God, say something, for crying out loud. I'm nobody's hallway." As I said it, I realized how hopelessly stupid it sounded, and momentarily cursed Tanya for drawing the analogy in the first place.

He raised his eyebrows at me. "Was that a sexual innuendo of some kind? If so, it was an obscure one."

The word "sexual" coming from him took my head to a completely terrifying and wonderful place, in which we were both naked, and alone, and naturally arguing with each other, because this was how I always pictured us, and that now sadly included any foreplay in the offing as well. In this vision, I knew what to do, and was confident and experienced enough to deal with the likes of the man in front of me. This was how I recognized that it was a fantasy, because I had no such skill or wisdom or experience, and my pathetic, brief history with men didn't allow for much review on the subject. Did I need to be a rank amateur in every aspect of this contest between us?

"Of course not," I lied through my teeth, wanting to protect myself against the probability that the happy, naked place I was imagining a moment ago wasn't a shared fantasy. "Why are you _everywhere_ all of a sudden, and yet...not everywhere? Why are you being so considerate, and...and nice?" _Oh_, _excellent, Bella_. I would obviously be earning full marks for clear and direct communication.

He tilted his head and frowned at me. "I'm sorry - did you mean to insult me or compliment me just now? Bring me up to speed on where we are with this, so I can adjust my reaction accordingly."

"I don't understand you. I don't know what you're doing, or why you're doing what you're doing."

Edward's expression cleared, and he laughed quietly. "Don't you?" He leaned over my seat, at once both too close and too far away. "I guess I'm going to have to figure out a way to be more succinct, then."

Emmett chose that precise moment to yell something at Edward, distracting him from our conversation and causing him to head to the back of the plane for most of the rest of our flight. But the damage had been done, because within the space of about a minute, he'd said "sexual" and "succinct", and for whatever reason, those words completely deep-sixed any peace of mind I might have assembled upon our exit from the hell of Kansas.

Peter met our plane on the tarmac at Teterboro with a limousine and some champagne. "I can't even tell you how proud I am of you people," he gushed. "And I should probably be really pissed about the stunt in McPherson, but I'm not, because you lived through it and validated every decision I've ever made about you, in addition to causing my phone to explode with calls about how incredible it all was. You're the hot talk for a Peabody and a DuPont, and you haven't even sat behind the desk yet. It's crazy. You make me look brilliant."

He debriefed us on the drive back to Manhattan, sitting between Emmett and myself on one long bench, while Tanya and Edward sat opposite us on the other. I could feel Edward's eyes on me whenever he wasn't speaking directly to Peter, and the scrutiny made me squirm. What the hell was I doing? This was insane. Setting aside for a moment the fact that we were coworkers on the eve of launching what had clearly become a fairly highly-anticipated new show, he was confusing, and mysterious, and honestly much too good-looking, and I was already painfully aware of the fact that I would doubtlessly disappoint him with my awkward fumbling.

I had never been great with men. Ever. I didn't have the faintest idea of how to go about a flirtation, never having learned the fine art. I had no idea how to be interesting to a man on that level, and as a result, most of my interactions with them were cerebral, or friendly, or both. Three of the four men who had actually seen me naked were the culmination of desperate attempts by Alice to help me along in that quarter. None of the encounters were especially satisfying, and none of the men were repeat customers. I couldn't get out of my own head long enough to relax and enjoy the experience, and I was too focused on the fact that I didn't really care about any of the guys in question. They were either equally desperate, or not particularly discerning, because they took whatever pleasure they could from me and were gone before the sun came up.

I knew that the boys in the bullpen were curious about the fact that I never dated. I knew that Newton would have happily taken a run at it himself if I let him, although I suspected that ultimately, his interest was born more out of the challenge I presented than any real desire for me. But the thought - God, the thought of facing that humiliation every day, of what would be said behind my back even if they spared me the face-to-face grief - I couldn't bear it. And so I shut down access to that part of myself entirely, choosing to pretend that it wasn't important; better that than to suffer crushing embarrassment and disappointment. I needed to be competent; it was the one thing I felt distinguished me from others around me, and this was clearly an area of life in which I wasn't likely to exhibit any degree of natural ability, so I opted to avoid it altogether and just stick to my lonely sexual table for one.

"Bella, why you frowning?"

Tanya's quiet question startled me from my internal inventory of intimacy inadequacy, and I looked up to find that she'd scooted across the empty space between the two benches to squeeze herself next to me. Much to my horror, I became aware of the fact that Emmett, Peter, and Edward were also waiting for an answer to the question she'd asked, and there was obviously no way I was going to be honest with any of them.

"Oh, sorry. Tired," I muttered. "Tomorrow's a big day, and after the weekend we've had, I just need to, um, decompress a little."

Peter put a sympathetic hand on my knee. "I know. We'll drop you off first, okay? you must be exhausted, but I'm so unbelievably proud of you, Bella. Truly. I couldn't wait until tomorrow to see you and let you know that."

The limo pulled up in front of my building, and I mumbled a general farewell as I exited the car, not wanting to meet Edward's eyes again tonight. Alone in my apartment once more, I dumped my bag on the floor and shuffled into the kitchen to grab a diet soda and some pretzels, too drained to put any effort into assembling an actual meal for myself.

I collapsed on my couch and tried to avoid thinking about anything involving Edward. I was successful for a grand total of roughly fifteen seconds, and only managed that much because I slopped a bit of soda on the coffee table when I placed the can on its surface. Why had I told him to stop trying to stay away from me? If he stayed away from me, he could remain this taboo little fantasy of mine. I wouldn't have to risk anything at all - no humiliation, no on-the-job hassle, no inevitable heartbreak and disappointment when he discovered that part of me was custom-built for rejection. I had no idea how to be close to someone this way. A piece of me was missing, or broken somehow, so I just threw a tarp over the mess and pretended it wasn't there.

And what about him, anyway? Why was he focusing on me, of all people? There were easily a half-dozen other women at the station who were prettier than I was. They were reasonably smart, and I knew from the bullpen gossip about them that they were far from frigid. The thought of him approaching any one of those women made me sick to my stomach. The thought of him approaching me made me hyperventilate. I seriously debated locking my door and never exiting my apartment again, because I had no idea whatsoever as to how I could extricate myself from the corner into which I was currently painted.

Maybe morning would never come. I'd never actually prayed for nuclear winter before, but I was forced to admit that it would neatly decide every outstanding issue for me with minimal input on my part.

I must have drifted off, because the next thing I heard was the sound of the garbage trucks on their pre-dawn rumble down Second Avenue, confirming that the Hail Mary nuclear winter I'd been semi-praying for hadn't arrived. The pillow on which I'd been sleeping was full of pretzel crumbs, crumbs which were now stuck to my cheek, so I brushed them off and raised my aching body off the couch to take a shower.

The shower gave me the opportunity to gather a fresh perspective on things. I found some righteous indignation, and I nurtured it and fed it until it bloomed into something I could wear as chainmail. I wasn't going to let some stupid schoolgirl crush derail me. How dare Edward be so confusing. I'd _cried_ on him, for the love of all things holy, and then he'd spent the rest of the weekend waltzing around the periphery, never dealing with whatever was going on between us. I couldn't be imagining it. I wasn't that creative, or that optimistic. But if he could ignore it, then so could I.

By the time I reached the office, I was in no mood for nonsense of any kind. Tyler and Paul practically jumped me the minute I got off the elevator, pelting me with questions about Kansas and asking to see my balls, because only someone with actual testicles would have pulled a stunt like crawling into a collapsing house to rescue children, apparently. I told them as much as I could bear to, only mentioning Bree in passing. That was enough for Newton, though, who rested a sympathetic hand on my shoulder, but didn't press me for more information on the subject.

I was relieved to find that Edward was out of the office for several hours, as he'd been booked to do an interview for some men's magazine. Kathy handed me a stack of phone messages and paused to take stock of my expression.

"You okay? Need some aspirin, or a handgun, or something?"

"I'm, uh, good. No. Thanks, though," I muttered, uncomfortable with the fact that she saw how ruffled I was, because I'd been doing my best to hide it under what I thought was a calm and unemotional veneer.

"Yeah," she laughed. "Sure you are. You have lunch with Chad and Melissa from corporate at 12:30 in the executive cafeteria on the Sky Floor. Eric just blew through here five minutes ago to let you know that the White House press briefing's been bumped up to 10 am because it's a travel day for the President, and Gibbs is going along. I pulled all the cards from the flowers and baskets for you to look at, and made little notes on the back of each one about what was delivered. Tell me if you want to make calls on those, or if you just want me to write 'thank you' notes for you to sign."

I looked around the office, noticing for the first time that there were fruit baskets and food baskets and floral arrangements covering every available surface in the space. "Where the hell did all of these come from, and why?"

"Some of them are to congratulate you on the stuff in Kansas, but most of them are about tonight's show," Kathy explained. "And there's one there that's full of Godiva chocolate. If I give you the card, can you pretend you didn't see that one? There's lots of other good stuff."

"Wait - these are all for _me_? That's insane."

Kathy tapped together a pile of cards and turned them over to me. "Well, you and _him_. Both," she clarified. "Can we not tell _him_ about the chocolate? Because if _he_ knows I want it, _he'll_ fight me for it."

"No problem. Take it," I grinned, happy to exact some meaningless revenge on him for being such an annoying enigma. I felt petty, but that didn't stop me from enjoying it. "Just leave the cards up here for the moment, okay? I don't want to make any decisions about them until Edward's had a chance to go through them, too."

The morning flew by, a dizzying whirl of phone calls and updates, an endless parade of people who wanted something from me. The health care reform bill was going to drop this week, so Emmett barreled through the door to let me know that we were going to launch the series that night as opposed to holding it for the following week. We'd edited down the series into five separate pieces, each of which was fairly evenly split between Edward's stuff and mine. It looked really, really good, and I was proud of the fact that we were opening with such a strong and timely topic.

Eric dropped in to update me on the White House briefing; there was something from NASA, and a report from Agriculture about disappointing forecasts for citrus crops, but nothing huge seemed to be happening anywhere, for which I was devoutly thankful. Tonight's broadcast would be challenging enough, and a slow news day after everything I'd seen and done this weekend would be welcome relief. FEMA had apparently learned a thing or two in the intervening years following Katrina; the cleanup and care following the tornadoes was swift and meaningful.

I managed to escape out to lunch without running into Edward, and the busy morning made it easier for me to go whole minutes at a time without thinking about him. The lunch with the suits was bizarre, because they were pumping me for clues as to which charitable efforts I supported, and the extent to which I thought I might want to get involved with those efforts. Carlisle Cullen had apparently asked them to check and see whether I'd be interested in throwing whatever weight I had behind some of his pet projects, which ran the gamut from music and athletic programs in underfunded public schools to Médecins Sans Frontières. I couldn't imagine what I might bring to the table and told them as much, but was happy to do whatever they thought might help the most, from appearances at fundraisers to PSAs. They talked a lot of nonsense about my "name commodity" and "Q Score", while I nodded along and prayed that I wouldn't have to spend any time with either one of them ever again.

When I made it back down to the office, Edward's door was wide open, The Clash was playing at an impressive volume, and Kathy was shaking her head while she banged her fingers on her computer keyboard.

"What the hell is going on in here?" I shouted over the punk riff.

Kathy raised her head and regarded me, her face completely devoid of expression. "He's in a mood," she shouted back, then dropped her eyes back down to her monitor and resumed her typing.

This was actually perfect. If Edward was in a "mood", we could get back to our comfort zone of arguing, and I could just forget everything else. I could - and would - forget about Friday, and the way being in his arms had made a very bad day better. I'd forget about how he'd risked himself to spare me the agony of Bree's final moments. I'd forget the weird new awareness of him I'd developed over the weekend. A safe distance could be reestablished, and that strange connection could just be chalked up to the heightened and very emotional circumstances in which we'd found ourselves.

Right. Crisis averted. Whatever that was, it was like a stomach bug, or something. Viral. Hell for twenty-four hours, and then gone.

New delusion duct-taped in place, I walked over to his door and stuck my head into his office. He was leaning back in his chair, throwing sharpened pencils at the ceiling, and from the look of it, his dart game was probably as impressive as everything else about him, because a good dozen #2 leads were currently poking into the dropped grid of white ceiling tiles above his head, making it look as though a porcupine had crawled up there to hover above him.

He dropped the pencil in his hand when he noticed me. "Where have you been?" he shouted, then reached over to lower the volume on the stereo in the bookcase behind his desk. "Where have you been?" he asked again, his voice quieter now that he wasn't competing with Joe Strummer for my attention.

"Lunch," I explained, and then fished around in my head for some neutral topic. "Kathy saved the cards from all of the flowers and baskets, if you want to see them. We need to figure out how to divide the 'thank you's, and whether you want to call these people or write to them instead." I turned to head back over to my office, and he jumped out of his chair.

"Wait - where the are you going now?"

I raised my eyebrows in his direction. "Back to my side of the office."

"Ooohooo, I don't think so," he said, crossing the floor to meet me in the doorway, but some survival instinct compelled me to seek the neutral territory in front of Kathy's desk, so I quickly backtracked into the main reception area, and he followed in short order.

"Kathy? Can I please have the cards from the flowers and things now? We can go through them and decide what we need to do about them." Kathy's eyes traveled from Edward back to me as she looked out above the top rim of her glasses. She handed me the stack of cards.

"I don't really care about the cards right now," Edward insisted. "I need to talk to you."

Talking would be bad. Talking would lead to thinking - about hallways, and possibilities, and disaster. "Come on," I stalled, spreading the cards out over the clear space at the front of Kathy's desk while she looked on with detached interest. "Let's just get this over with."

Edward huffed. "Fine. And then we're talking, whether you want to or not." I scanned the cards in front of me, trying very hard to ignore him while he did the same. I pulled the names I didn't recognize into a separate pile, assuming that these were people who knew him.

_'Dear Bella and Edward - Talent, like water, eventually finds its own level. It was only a matter of time before the two of you worked together, and I couldn't be prouder of, or happier for, my two favorite students. Let me take you both out to dinner next week to celebrate properly. Kick some ass tonight! Best wishes to a team for the ages, Andrew Ellington'_

I picked up the card and waved it in front of Edward. "You had Andrew as well? I didn't know that; he's the only professor I've stayed in touch with all these years."

Edward took the card from my hand to read it. "Um, yes. Me too. We'll have to do dinner with him sometime to catch up." He shuffled the rest of the cards back into a pile, putting Andrew's card at the bottom. "You know what? I'm not doing this now - we'll deal with it later. Right now, we need to talk. Your office. Let's go."

When I didn't move, he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Seriously, don't make me drag you, because I will. I'd really rather not have an audience for this, but it's your choice."

Kathy paused her typing and turned to look at me. "You need me to call someone about him?"

"Can you just - I don't know - do something assistanty and keep out of this? Go file something," Edward barked at her.

"Oh, I'll file something," she replied. "I'll file my shoe. I know just where I'll file it, you big bully."

"Knock it off," I interrupted them. "Fine, Edward. You want to talk? My office." I headed toward my door with Edward following close behind me.

"I took your basket full of Godiva chocolate," Kathy called after him in a taunt.

He closed the door behind us and I stood in the center of the room, turning to face him. "What?"

Edward shook his head at me. "Why are you avoiding me?" he demanded.

"I'm not avoiding you," I protested. "You had a thing this morning, and I had lunch. How is that avoiding you?" This might have been slightly more convincing had I been able to meet the glare he was throwing in my direction, but I had my limits.

He crossed his arms over his chest again. "I see. So your plan is to just not talk about what happened between us, is that right?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. If there was something to discuss, _surely_ you would have brought it up at some point between Friday and now." I forced myself to look up at him as I said it, and immediately regretted the decision, because he was clearly frustrated, and also...hurt. I looked away again as quickly as I could.

"Oh, of course - because this is really a conversation I wanted to have in the middle of all that death and destruction. Like that wouldn't have been the most idiotic move in the world." He started to walk toward me. "Deal with me, Bella, because I'm not leaving until you do. How do you feel about me, exactly?"

"What? I don't know," I hedged, suddenly slightly dizzy from all the adrenaline coursing through my body. His eyes trapped me; he looked determined and impossibly male, and I was struggling not to succumb to a panic attack at the sight of him.

"What would you do if I kissed you right now?"

There was a strange buzzing in my ears. "Huh? Why - why are you asking me that?"

"I'm asking you that because I'm pretty sure I'm about to find out what you'll do." He stepped even closer to me, and I threw a desperate hand out to ward him off.

"Stop - this is crazy," I panted, my heart pounding blood through my body at an alarming rate. "We can't do this, Edward. It's not smart."

"I know it's not smart, but that doesn't mean we're not going to do it anyway, even though the reasons why I think it's not smart and the reasons why you think it's not smart are probably different right now. Speaking of which, why do you think it's not smart?"

I wracked my brain for a coherent answer which wouldn't totally expose how scared I was of being a complete bust in the romance department. "We never agree on anything. We work together. I have to see you every day, and people are going to notice, and talk, and it'll be impossible to keep it a secret."

Edward laughed. "A secret? That's ridiculous. I don't care who knows." He strode back to the threshold and opened the office door. "Kathy, get in here," he yelled.

She appeared on the threshold a moment later, looking pissed. "Why are you always screaming at the top of your lungs like a freaking maniac?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. "Listen, I'm about to kiss Bella."

Kathy blinked at him. "Do I need to watch this, or draft a memo about it?"

Edward shook his head. "I just didn't want to make like this was some kind of big secret, so now somebody else in the office knows."

She nodded. "Okay, then. I'll hold the calls. And eat the chocolate. Bye." And she closed the door on us.

Edward turned back to face me, grinning at my abject mortification and raising his palms to face the ceiling. "See? Nobody cares."

"You're the most arrogant, obnoxious - Jesus, Edward," I seethed. "I _work_ here. This is serious for me, and today of all days - what the hell are you doing?"

"I have no idea," he laughed, and he sounded a bit shocked at himself. "Honestly, no clue. I've been a lot of places, but I've never been here before. I'm totally winging it, and I'll probably fuck it up, but that doesn't seem like a good enough reason anymore for me not to try."

"You make me nervous."

"You make me anxious."

"That's the same thing," I argued, backing up until I felt the edge of the desk hit the back of my thighs.

"I don't think so - look it up," he countered, advancing toward me again until he came to a stop about a foot away from where I stood. The expression in his eyes didn't seem "anxious" to me, but it certainly illustrated the word "heated" with precision. I felt microwaved, flushed all over, and before he could do anything else, a last-ditch confession seemed in order.

"Wait. Wait a minute," I gasped. "I need to tell you something." I couldn't do this with my eyes open, because the humiliation was already threatening to overwhelm me, so I gripped the edge of the desk and closed my eyes against the shame and his resultant amusement. "Edward. I don't know how to do this. I'm not really very good with...you know. Sex." I actually mumbled the last word as though it was some kind of horrible disease, feeling totally ridiculous, embarrassed and vulnerable. But there. At least he had the information, and I'd never been forced to demonstrate precisely how lame I was, which would have to count as a Pyrrhic victory of sorts.

He didn't answer me immediately. I was honestly waiting for a laugh, or the sound of a door, or some other indication that I was off the hook, but nothing came. Nothing, until I felt a small rush of air against my cheek, and I opened my eyes to find Mr. Microwave had covered eleven and a half of the twelve remaining inches of space between us.

"Yeah," he breathed, with a small smile on his face, still not touching me with anything more than his eyes. "That's about to change."

"Aaaah," I said, nonsensical and shaking, caught somewhere between frustration and the kind of hysterical laughter you have in the face of something too overwhelming to process. "Stop, please, because I'm either going to pass out, or hit you, or do something completely stupid. I don't know what, but trust me, it's on the way." I sounded breathless, but only because I was.

Edward put his hands on my shoulders. "Time to shut up now," he whispered, and I felt his lips touch mine, interrupting any opportunity to make a bigger ass of myself than I already had, and striking matches along every single nerve ending they encountered. Oh, holy mother. He smelled amazing, and felt even better. This was already more satisfying than any other physical experience in my entire life, and nothing had even really happened yet.

"Really tell me to stop, and I will," he murmured, his lips never leaving me. "Or I'll try my best to, anyway."

"You just told me to shut up," I murmured back like a moron, as his hands traveled from my shoulders to either side of my face. "I can't shut up and tell you to stop at the same time."

"Oh my God," he smiled, and I felt his teeth against my lower lip. "When have you _ever_, _ever_ paid attention to what I've asked you to do before?"

"I listen to you when you have a point," I stipulated, momentarily forgetting that we were in the middle of something infinitely more interesting than a theoretical debate about the "potato/potahto" way we generally operated.

"Can we discuss this in a minute or two? I'm kind of busy right now," he reminded me, then took the decision out of my hands by crushing his mouth over mine.

I thought I'd been kissed before. I mean, in addition to the Four Naked Men, I'd obviously been on dates with others, and those dates had ended with kisses and the odd grope here and there. But what Edward's mouth and tongue were doing to my mouth and tongue bore no relation whatsoever to anything I'd ever experienced, because what happened when he touched me felt like the kind of explosion you see when demolition specialists bring down bridges or hi-rises. The charges went off in some sort of sequence: first my lips, and then my neck, traveling along my arms, spreading across my chest, rolling through my groin, and then rippling down my legs for a grand finale, destroying any illusion I'd been harboring that my body was immune to _feeling_ this way.

When the dust finally settled, my brain crawled from the rubble and noticed that he was standing between my useless legs; we were both breathing pretty heavily, the shared air between us charged with things yet undone, but promised. He was leaning over me slightly, and his hands had left the sides of my face. One hand was behind us, flat against the top of my desk, and the other was tangled in the hair at the back of my neck. My own hands had decided to plant themselves firmly at the top of his shoulders, and were currently locked in a vice grip on the shirt which covered him there.

"Hey, Bella?" he exhaled the words softly into my neck, making me shiver with an aftershock at the sensation. I hummed in response, words completely failing me. "We're definitely going to be doing that a lot. Fair warning."

I suddenly remembered that I sucked at this, and instantly, the nerves returned. "Wait - was that, ah, okay? For you, I mean? It was nice, for me. Crap, don't laugh, please," I begged him when I felt him chuckle against the skin on my neck.

"I'm not laughing at you, Bella. I'm laughing because I'm tempted to provide you with some hard data about how nice that was for me, and this really isn't a great time to be doing that." He slowly unwrapped himself from around me and took a step back, running his hands through his hair. "Oh, Christ. What now? It's even worse than I thought." He shook a finger at me. "Big, big trouble."

We both jumped when the intercom on the phone buzzed, heralding an announcement from Kathy.

"You people done kissing or whatever? Peter just called to tell you he wants you in the studio. Also, the mailroom just delivered your linoleum. It's heavy, and I'm not moving it, so don't even ask."

"Why is she so unpleasant to me?" Edward's brow furrowed in confusion.

"Because you're a complete jackass to her, and she's smart," I told him, gradually regaining a sense of balance and sliding off the edge of my desk. "So, um, yeah." I bit down hard on my lip in order to force myself not to ask the kind of really stupid questions women generally ask in a situation like this. For once in my life, questions seemed dangerous to me. I was afraid of the questions, and even more afraid of the answers. And I hated that, which in turn made me irrationally irritated with Edward.

He'd turned to start heading toward the door, assuming I'd follow him, but stopped before he got to the handle. "Don't even think about pretending that didn't just happen," he snapped, making the care I'd taken not to say those things out loud pretty much worthless. "I have no idea what's next, either. But whatever it is, we're going to figure it out. I won't be glib, and you're not allowed to shut down on me. Got it?"

"I'm not _allowed_ to - "

Edward was in front of me again before the rest of the sentence had a chance to escape. "Listen to me very, very carefully," he said quietly. "I'm going to try very hard not to set up roadblocks between us. All I'm saying is that it would be _nice_ if you agreed to do the same. This is different for me, too. And I'm not kidding when I say I'll probably fuck it up. Just keep talking to me, and I'll keep talking to you, and we'll argue about it as much as we need to. You scare the ever-loving shit out of me, Bella, so if you needed that kind of power, know that you have it. It makes me as paranoid as it makes you, but not paranoid enough to run away. I'm sick of running away. It's just as difficult as standing still." He grabbed my hand and tugged. "Let's get down to the studio and see what Peter wants."

Amazingly, Kathy was seated at her desk, shuffling through an enormous stack of folders from the press department and shoving the new headshots for each of us into the pockets on the inside of each folder. She paused when she heard us approach, arching her eyebrow at us.

"Let's get this straight," she began. "I like my job. I like you two, for the most part, except when he's crabby and screaming. What you do behind your doors is your business, and I'm not here to talk about it, so I don't. You just need to let me know what to tell someone if they want see you when your door is closed, because I'm not Patricia Arquette, and I'm not gonna sit here and guess when it's okay for, say, the Bobbsey Twins to interrupt you, and when it's not."

"I'll hang my tie around the doorknob if we want you to send people away," Edward smirked. "Sound good?"

"Or you could just tell me when you don't want to be disturbed by anyone," she responded. "And please, God, no noises. I'll quit if I hear noises."

That made Edward laugh. "Now you know I'm going to close my door and bark like a dog or sing 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic' just to see what you'll do about it, right?"

Kathy turned to me. "What do you even see in him?"

I shook my head at her. "It's a mystery to me." It wasn't, really, but I wasn't about to point it all out to her, because she'd probably want to kiss him then, too.

"I'm completely charming," Edward insisted, and Kathy rolled her eyes.

"Again, totally losing your touch," I grinned, feeling like a real girl for the first time in...well...ever, really, and he put his hand at the small of my back to lean into my ear.

"Not losing it," he whispered. "Refining it."

# # #

A/N - Hi! Look at it this way: the previous chapter was really a double-feature in length, so it hasn't actually been so long since I updated. Okay, yes, I don't buy the argument either - it was a difficult task to steer this ship back into calmer waters. Sorry. I can't thank you enough for the astonishing reviews on the last chapter - you all went out of your way to make me feel terrific about it, and I'm so grateful to you for taking the time to do that. For the record, I'm not in the news business, and I've been fortunate enough never to have experienced a tornado first-hand. I'm OCD about research, though.

The Polovtsian Dances appear in the opera _Prince Igor_ by Borodin. They are, in essence, a flirtation. More importantly, you'd recognize the music in its repurposed version, because it's the tune for "Stranger in Paradise". Or maybe not. Anyway, it made me laugh. I think Bella's version of a Polovtsian dance would look a bit like Julia Louis-Dreyfus cutting a rug in "Seinfeld". All thumbs, no rhythm.

Once again, ciaobella27 and littlesecret84 preread this stuff. They're beautiful in every possible way. I like their hayah.

Thank you all so much for reading and reviewing and recommending this story!


	13. Live in Five

# # #

Live in Five

Of the many things which might be said about Peter Laurent, you would never call him clueless. He'd never been a reporter, preferring instead to start and stay on the administrative side of things. He had vision, and purpose, and the kind of temperament which lent itself best to managing other people instead of coaxing information from them. He was a leader, and where he led, people followed. Despite the fact that he made his mark on the world by focusing on the bigger picture, he didn't miss much on the ground.

It was therefore perhaps not at all surprising that his eyebrows shot up to his hairline when Edward and I walked into the studio. We weren't holding hands. We weren't talking. We weren't even looking at each other, but clearly, some enormous shift in atmosphere had taken place, and it didn't take him more than ten seconds to pick up on it.

"Okay, something's different," he said, as he observed us make our way over to Daisy/Derek. "What's happening with you two?"

"Define 'something'," Edward grinned, apparently completely at ease in the middle of this sea change.

"Define 'happening'," I added. I was nervous, excited and weirded out, and still trying to come to grips with the fact that I apparently had an "on" switch, activated by Edward's talented lips and his startling refusal to let me escape them.

Peter took a beat. "So help me God, I will kill you both with my bare hands if you screw this up for me," he glowered. "You two didn't say two words to each other on the drive home yesterday."

"Well, we're talking now," Edward offered. "At least, some of the time, we're talking."

"Shit. Don't tell me any more. I don't want to know. I'm going to pretend everything's fine, and you're going to make sure it is. Clear?"

"I kissed Bella." Edward said this more as an announcement than a confession.

"Are you planning to go around the entire building to share this information with everyone you see?" I hissed, partly horrified and slightly thrilled by the thought.

"I might," he smiled. "You know, you could do your part by taking the odd floors while I take the even ones."

Peter's eyes narrowed as the two men silently regarded one another for a moment, and then he exhaled loudly. "This network doesn't have a policy against fraternization among coworkers, as long as it's not between an employee and a direct-report. I can't stop either one of you from doing whatever it is you're going to do, and on a personal note, if it makes you happy, then I'm happy for you. But know this, Edward: whatever's going on in your head, the next six months of your life belong to me and to this show, and I'm expecting you to deliver on the promises you made to me. Keep whatever this is away from the studio. That goes for you too, Bella."

"Six months?" I tilted my head toward Edward. "What happens in six months?"

"Jesus, Edward. Classy," Peter muttered. "Forget to mention that, did you? How ironic, considering the fact that you were the one who insisted it be left to you." He picked up his Blackberry and his black leather portfolio. "I'm just going to be...somewhere else...for a minute, breathing deeply and maybe drinking heavily. Don't go anywhere; we're running final tech in ten."

I watched Peter vacate the premises, then repeated myself. "Six months? What happens in six months?"

Edward scratched the back of his head. "I go back out there," he said, gesturing vaguely with one arm.

"I don't understand. Back out where, exactly?"

"Back out _there_. Wherever. Out of the studio and back to the world." And the look he gave me while he said this was an even one, waiting while I digested the information and absorbed the nutrient of the consequences.

"Why?" I finally asked.

"Because that's what I do. That's who I _am_, Bella. I'm not the guy who sits in a chair every day. It would kill me." His voice was convincing, but in his eyes I found a hint of a desperate plea for my understanding.

It occurred to me that I'd neglected to really ask many questions about this before. I'd just assumed that his contract and my contract were the same annual deal. Clearly, they weren't.

"Okay, wait. I don't get it. Why would the network go to all the trouble of launching the new show if you're just going to leave it after two quarters?"

"Ah. Well, I'm not leaving the show, precisely. I'll just leave the studio and be phased back out to the field, and Peter's got a few candidates lined up to take the desk. I'm here because Dan's death didn't leave him a whole lot of time for contract negotiations. My father asked me to step in, so I did."

I didn't say anything for a moment, because this information knocked me sideways on several different levels. Edward studied my face, but he must not have liked what he saw there, because after a minute, he huffed in frustration.

"Ugh. You look constipated again. Here we go. Okay, Bella, get it out of your system. I'm right here. Let me have it, even though I'll be shaking my head the whole time because I can't believe how rarely you actually _live_ your life."

"Peter said you specifically wanted to tell me about this yourself. When exactly were you going to share this information, Edward? I feel like an idiot now."

"Why? Why do you feel like an idiot? What _difference_ does it make?" He tried to move closer to me, prompting me to move further back.

"I feel like an idiot because I'm making choices about you based on - God, I don't know. Based on assumptions. I'm making choices without knowing all the facts. You knew all the facts, and I didn't. How is that fair?"

He nodded his head slightly. "All right, you got me. That's a valid argument, even though you probably should have asked a few more questions than you did. Not that I'm maligning your generally meticulous eye for research or anything." The grin returned. "So now what?"

I squinted my eyes shut as tightly as possible so that I didn't have to look at him. I knew this was too good to be true. Of course, it had to be. "What do you mean, 'now what'? Now we forget about what just happened in the office, and we do our jobs, and you go back to wherever it is you came from. I have no intention of becoming your amusing little distraction, Edward. Lots of other fish in the sea for you. Keep swimming. What's the point?"

"What's the - what's -" he sputtered in disbelief, then grabbed me by the bicep to drag me out of the studio and into an adjacent green room, where he closed the door and rounded on me, teeth bared.

"The _point _is that there are no guarantees on forever. Did Tanya get one? Did Oleg? Did Bree? I don't offer you lies, even though you might really want to hear them. I offer you the truth. Here I am, right now," he said, throwing his arms out wide. "That's all I've got, so that's what I'm giving. Give me your now, Bella. Give me your now, and I'll give you mine, and we'll just figure it out as we go. Look at it this way: we might hate each other a week from today, and the whole thing will be moot. You'll be marking the days off the calendar to get rid of me."

"Is that supposed to be the bright side?"

"Maybe. I keep reminding you: I have no idea how to do this. I can only tell you that I've never actually wanted to _try_ doing it before. And because the universe has a truly sick sense of humor, I have to want to try to do this with you. Christ - your gears have gears. Even more troubling is the fact that I find this so attractive about you."

My stomach gave an odd little shiver. "You do?"

Edward's eyes closed, and he nodded his head. "It irritates me to have to admit it, but I do. Are we done talking for the moment?"

"I don't know, Edward." Because I didn't know, but I also wasn't entirely sure what else I wanted to say to him just then.

"Okay, so don't know with me. I don't know with you, either. Just stop being such a chicken."

"You stop being such a jerk," I retorted.

"Oh, yeah, we're definitely done talking now," he nodded again, and before I could stop him or take evasive action of any kind, he leaned down and kissed me, quick and hard. I didn't even have a moment to process the fact that it felt no less amazing to have those lips on mine then than it had the first time it happened on my office before the lips were gone again.

"This is going well so far, isn't it?" His sarcasm was delivered with a slightly uncertain accent.

It was that bit of uncertainty which made it impossible for me to do anything other than shake my head. "Nobody's dead...yet," was the best I could say about the situation. "But you need to stop doing that until I have a chance to figure things out."

And then suddenly, he was pressed up against me, keeping me in place by the sheer magnetism of the attraction I felt for him. "Stop doing...what, exactly, sweetheart?"

I gritted my teeth in an effort to stop myself from either screaming at him or rubbing up against him in a way which would render the objections coming out of my mouth pretty pointless. "Stop doing that. The kissing, and the standing so close to me."

Edward pressed his lovely lips together. "Remember when I said that your gears are irritating and attractive? This is the part where they're irritating." He took a step back, but kept touching me with his eyes.

"I'm knocking, and then I'm entering," Peter's voice boomed from the other side of the door as he delivered three sharp raps against the surface. "Do _not_ make me regret it."

The door opened and Peter walked in, comically shielding his eyes with one hand.

"It's safe," I informed him, and he lowered his shield with relief.

Edward cleared his throat. "I kissed Bella again."

"Jesus, man, I'm not keeping score," Peter barked. "I don't want to know. This is a green room, not a confessional. Just tell me everything's okay. That's all I want to hear right now. Everything's okay. In three hours, you two go live. I'm too young to die, so please, just tell me everything's okay."

"He told me I look constipated, and then called me a chicken," I reported, trying not to feel like a tattletale, but wanting very much to let Peter know that nobody was slinging champagne and roses around here.

Peter laughed the unbalanced laugh of a madman. "I have no response to that. At all. Except to say, once again, that everything had better be okay." He looked hopefully at both of us. "So, is everything okay?"

I shrugged, but didn't look at Edward. "I'm fine. No problem."

"In my defense, she definitely did look constipated," Edward grinned ruefully. "And she's definitely being a chicken. But other than that, no problem at all."

"As long as she doesn't look constipated when the red light goes on, that'll do for me," Peter concluded. "Let's just shut up about this now and get out there, please, before I have a cardiac episode."

We walked back out under the curious stares of the studio staff and took our places behind Daisy/Derek. Edward decided that the sensible move given the scrutiny we were under was to whistle "You're a Grand Ol' Flag", making the entire situation implausibly odder and more awkward than it already was.

"Feeling patriotic?" I asked him, letting Phil, one of the sound guys, work the coil of my earpiece behind my ear.

"Not especially," he replied. "It's a good song to tap to, though. Pretty much anything Jimmy Cagney could tap to is mock-proof."

"The guy who played Teddy Roosevelt in that film - now, _he_ looked constipated. That bit always makes me laugh."

Edward's mouth twisted into a wry smile as Phil handed him his earpiece. "You recognize your kind."

"Hey," Rose said as she sauntered up to the desk. "Ready for dress rehearsal?"

Apparently, both Edward and I simultaneously cocked our heads to indicate that we weren't sure, which made Rose laugh. "Right. Let's get levels on you, and check in with Ben."

We used the Sunday night transcript for tech, as the newsroom was still in edit on the pieces to air that evening. It was completely surreal to cue up tapes of ourselves reporting from Kansas, and the images brought back all the emotion we'd experienced over the weekend. I intro'ed the piece I'd done on an open-air Sunday mass which was held next to the ruins of a beautiful prairie church in McPherson, then sat back to observe it from a slightly less-involved perspective.

Edward leaned over to me while the tape ran. "You have no idea how badly I wanted to kiss you after you talked to the guy who found the dining room chairs for the older parishioners," he whispered in my ear, his lips so close that I could feel the minuscule, downy hairs on the helix rise and strain to find them.

Ben's voice in my head interrupted us. "Hi there," he said mildly. "Mics are live, and we can all hear you, even when you whisper. Thought you'd want to know." I looked up to see the entire population of the studio laughing their heads off. Well, except for Peter, who closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

"Oh, spectacular," I groaned, my cheeks blooming poppy red. "Thanks a lot, Edward."

"Hey, we can cross this whole floor off the notification list," he responded without a trace of shame, as he gave a little bow in sarcastic thanks to the people making fun of him. "Many birds, one whisper. I really don't give a shit, as I think I might have mentioned once or twice before now."

"Can you please remember that you're wearing a mic in here?"

"Can you please remember to stop caring about what anybody else thinks?"

"Can both of you please remember to shut the hell up and get back to tech?" Peter snapped. Edward elbowed me gently in the ribs to get his last shot in, and I ignored him while we continued through the end of the rehearsal. Since this broadcast had taken place in the old studio, none of the segments were created to accommodate the new technology we had at our disposal, so we spent a half-hour following the tech doing a few dry-runs with the smart boards on random subjects hastily compiled with the in-desk computers. Edward was fascinated by the fact that we had the ability to render a globe in three virtual dimensions, and he momentarily lost himself in the joy of rubbing his fingers across the smart board to make the globe spin.

"My finger's in Brazil - now it's in Madagascar," he murmured, and I got the impression that he was actually a bit jealous of the journey his digit was making without him. The sight of it brought forcibly to mind how anxious he was to return to the life of itinerant news gatherer, and I felt hopelessly pulled in two different directions. The selfish, newly-conscious part of me was desperate to see him stay, to put my lips on his lips as often as possible and to see if we could maybe figure out how not to murder each other while we explored the possibility of being something more together. The other part of me knew that he was a hawk with restless wings, happiest when ranging far and wide, most successful as a hunter without a jess dangling from his leg. I had no desire to be the tether, and I had less desire still to be the perch he left behind when he took inevitable flight.

No solution to the dilemma immediately presented itself, so I was compelled to table it for contemplation at a later point in time. Today, we were staring down the barrel of some pretty intense responsibility, and whatever happened upstairs or in the green room would have to wait. Today, it was about the broadcast.

Peter finally clapped his hands together. "We're as ready as we're ever going to be, I think. Why don't you two take the next hour or so to head back up to the office and look over what we've got cooking for the show. I need you down here again by 5:15 at the latest."

The elevator ride back to the office was considerably more solemn than the ride down to the studio had been. I could feel Edward watching me, and I grew steadily more uncomfortable under his scrutiny as the floors rushed past us.

"I really hate that you're doing this, you know," he finally said.

"Well, I'm sorry you can't have what you want the minute you decide you want it," I answered. "Appreciate the novelty."

A frustrated laugh escaped him. "You have no idea, sweetheart. You really, really have no clue."

"No, well, I wouldn't, would I?" I snapped, his proximity in the tiny metal box disturbing and unsettling me. "Tell me why you insisted that I be your co-anchor, Edward. Did I strike you as an easy mark or something?"

He frowned and shook his head. "Please believe me when I tell you that there is absolutely _nothing_ easy about you, Bella."

I snorted in response, but since he was clearly not going to answer the one question I wanted an answer to, I decided to stop asking anything else. "Let's just put this somewhere else and concentrate on the show."

"Sure, but you need to know that this is without question the strangest foreplay ever."

"Foreplay intimates that there's a lead-up to something else, and I'm not confirming that there's anything to lead up to, Edward. The jury's still out."

"Well, wherever the jury is, I hope they're enjoying themselves more than I am."

"Can we just - stop? I mean, just for right now, can we not do this? I need to focus," I half-begged him. "Let's just shake hands for now and focus on living through the next few hours. This is serious for me."

"Oh, it's serious for me, too," Edward sighed. "Serious as a heart attack. Fine. I will do my best to be moderately resistible for the next few hours, but after that, I make no promise of any kind."

"See, you say things like that, and they make me want to punch you right in your arrogant face," I muttered as we stepped off the elevator onto the newsroom floor.

"Punching is physical contact. I can't say it's exactly what I was hoping for, but it's a start," he shrugged.

Kathy raised her eyebrows as we entered our office suite and each headed for our own offices. My time away from Edward was short-lived, however, because fewer than five minutes passed before our office was invaded by, in order, Emmett, Tanya, Tyler, Newton, Seth, Paul, Eric, and Sam, all clamoring to abuse us and download background on the stories slated for the night's broadcast. It had remained a relatively quiet news cycle, but we were all so amped up that even the low-key stories we were leading with tonight seemed somehow larger and more complicated than usual. By the time Paul and Emmett started shouting "Spartans! Prepare for glory!", Kathy had reached the end of her tolerance, and promptly shoved every last one of them out the main door, closing it behind them and threatening them with whatever powerful secretarial voodoo curses she had at her disposal.

"You're really pretty scary," Edward informed her, as the noise in the hallway outside faded to a dull roar.

"Lightweight. This place has nothing on the schoolyard at Christ the Redeemer," Kathy responded with a disdainful sniff. "None of you would last fifteen minutes with those eighth graders. Amen."

I wanted to smooth over the rough patch from the elevator, but had no desire or ability to begin any kind of conversation to that effect, so I opted for the age-old solution to social issues instead, and hauled the opened bottle of Cuervo from my desk drawer. Snagging a few paper cups from the water dispenser in our reception area, I brought the bounty over to Kathy's desk and poured three shots.

"Get 'em up in the air," I said, handing Edward and Kathy each a paper cup. "To Walter Cronkite, our patron saint. May he guide us and watch over us, tonight and every night at six."

"I don't think I should be drinking on the job yet," Kathy stated, looking dubiously at her paper-cup shot.

Edward laughed. "Who's the lightweight now? Slam it, or quit." And then he turned to me. "To Walter," he toasted, sliding the shot through his lips. He sucked in a breath of air and expelled it quickly, crushing the cup in his hand and tossing it on the floor. "Ah, bracing. Come on, Swan - let's make news."

Tequila on an empty stomach, consumed less than an hour before sitting in front of tens of millions of viewers for the first official time as a new team, probably wasn't the wisest choice, but at least it served to distract us from the earlier awkwardness. We rode back down to the studio in more peaceful silence, staring at the floor and the walls and avoiding each other, but not in a hostile way.

The studio was total chaos, nerves filtering under the doorway even before we actually got inside. Engineers from every tech discipline were crawling all over the place, gaffer-taping cables, shoving monitors around, running light cues, and checking the white balance on the cameras. It looked like an ant hill, and I felt the tequila roll unpleasantly in my stomach in response.

Peter trotted over to greet us as we entered the studio, eying us carefully to determine the emotional tone we were projecting. "We're still okay?"

Edward and I nodded. "No new kissing to report since the last time," Edward added, clearly trying to get a rise out of Peter, who refused to take the bait. Instead, he checked our wardrobe and called Charlotte over to start powdering us down, after which Ben came over to give us the story slate.

"Okay, folks, here we go: we lead with eight dead in Afghanistan roadside attacks, Ares I-X launch and the NASA report on Constellation, continuing tornado damage cleanup, break. Then citrus crop forecasts, the hate crime bill, break, rolling into health care reform and then your extended piece. Break, and we close with a piece on CERN and the explanation of what the startup of the new testing means from the guys in Brookhaven on Long Island. We won't do your extemp today, because the health care piece covers that time."

"Is Victor letting you use that report from '98 on the Shepard kid for the hate crimes piece? Newton wasn't sure," I asked, and Ben shook his head.

"Even better - we have a new piece from his mother that the guys in DC shot. She was standing next to Obama when he signed the bill today." He tapped his headphones. "Are we good? Yes? Mic up and let's set the levels. We're on in fifteen."

We took our seats behind Daisy/Derek and let Phil mic us and get our earpieces set. Charlotte bounced over for a final check on our powder and hair, making sure that collars and jackets were properly smooth and flattened. Rose walked up to the desk again and placed her fingers on the outer edge.

"Ready? Who's got the lead? Peter said you'd decide between the two of you."

I looked over at Edward, who was lightly drumming again, his lower lip between his teeth. He looked back at me and shrugged, so I said I'd take it. Rose nodded and relayed the information to the camera ops as she walked away.

"Five minutes to air. Five minutes," Rose called, and the studio emptied of most of the tech staff. As the last one was walking out, I looked up to see Tanya and Emmett walk in and stand next to Peter and some of the network brass at the rear of the studio. I gave her a little wave, but couldn't smile because the nerves were really kicking in.

Noticing immediately, she stepped up to the desk and whacked the palm of her hand sharply on the surface, scaring the shit out of both Edward and myself. "This is cameras, not machine guns," she hissed. "Stop being big babies. Do this news, and then we go have drinks." And then she winked at us and turned to walk back to the rear of the studio. As freaked out as Peter was, he still managed to smile at her, and she coiled her arm around his bicep to give it a comforting squeeze.

Edward's drumming continued unabated, and oddly, seeing him so nervous calmed me down. I reached over to grab one of his hands and still him. "Hey," I said quietly. "It's you and me. That's all. Just us, reading the news. No big deal. Nobody dies if we make a mistake. In fact, I plan on deliberately mispronouncing something at some point. I'll set the bar low. Make you look like a genius."

He turned to me and, bending, touched his forehead against mine. "If we live through the next hour, I'm definitely kissing you again whether you want me to or not," he said softly.

"Hi. Still hearing you," Ben laughed in my ear. "Forty-five seconds."

We straightened back up and faced the cameras. The whole studio got deathly quiet, and even Ben's voice in my hear seemed tinny and indistinct. "Oh, shit," I whispered. "Here we go."

"Thirty seconds to air," Ben said calmly. "Good luck, guys."

Rose stood between Cameras Two and Three, counting down. "We're live in five, four, three - cue intro, cue the fly." I didn't look up, but heard the flycam above our heads pan from set-left to set-right, giving the millions of viewers a fantastic shot of our scalps and the new studio.

"Fade out fly, fade in Two." The red light on Camera Two blinked hot, and Rose pointed her index finger at me. I took a deep breath to center myself, and dove in. "Good evening from New York, I'm Isabella Swan. We'd like to welcome you to this, the first broadcast of ABN's new nightly news. Seated next to me is my new co-anchor and esteemed colleague, Edward Cullen." At this, Edward gave a small nod and said "Good evening." He looked serious, and calm, and unimaginably beautiful, the profile I'd first seen at Dan's memorial service once again my only access to his face. Ben hissed briefly, calling my attention to the fact that I'd stared at the side of Edward's head for a beat too long. I quickly shifted my attention back to Camera Two. "The death of eight US service members over the past twenty-four hours marks the end of the deadliest month for US forces in Afghanistan since the war began. Yesterday's casualties, which claimed the lives of those soldiers along with their Afghan interpreter, were the result of an IED bombing during intense fighting in the southern part of the country. Glenn Horvath reports from Kabul."

I heard Glenn's report cue up behind us on the video wall, and took a deep breath. "Three minutes thirty-five," Rose announced. "Edward, Camera One on you when we're back."

"Nice job," Peter called from the back of the studio. "Quit staring at him, Bella." I rolled my eyes as the camera guys laughed, but the exchange clearly loosened Edward up a bit, because he chuckled as well.

"You okay?" I turned my head to glance at him again. "NASA's up next." He nodded and sat straighter in his chair.

Our three-minute reprieve evaporated like rain on a hot summer sidewalk, and in what felt like mere seconds, the red light on Camera One switched on and Rose was pointing at Edward. He calmly placed his hands on the desk in front of him, took a deep breath, and began to regurgitate the information on the prompter.

"NASA's Ares 1-X Flight Test Vehicle launched this morning from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, following yesterday's postponement due to inclement weather. The $445 million experimental launch was conducted with over 700 sensors to determine stresses on the vehicle during ascent. The Ares rocket will become the backbone of NASA's Constellation program, supporting the International Space Station and eventually returning Americans to the moon and beyond. Despite several minor hiccups, including a booster rocket which failed to separate, NASA considers today's test to be a major success for the next generation of spacecraft. The Obama administration is set to make a decision in the next several months about the immediate direction of U.S. Space policy. Jee-yun Kim joins us live from the Kennedy Space Center."

Jee-yun picked up the throw and recapped the launch and the press conference, running b-roll of the launch and a Q and A with one of the directors of the program. When she was finished, she threw it back to me, and I rolled into the tornado clean-up story.

"We're out for six," Ben announced at the end of the tornado piece, indicating that we'd gone into a commercial break. Peter strolled up to the desk; he was smiling, which automatically made me feel worlds better about everything.

"So far, so good," he said. "Listen, I know it's the first show, but you two can relax a little. The whole point of this switch was to create a less formal feeling. We've got the health care piece in the next set - why don't the two of you open it with one of the smart boards? You know we've got graphics on spending cued up for you. Just take a crack at it, and maybe riff for a minute about how you approached the interviews on the piece. Ben, you hear that? I want the smart board ready for health care." Peter said some more nice things in encouragement, and then faded back to the rear of the studio.

"I'll do the lead-in," Edward offered. "It's my turn, anyway. Okay with you?"

I nodded and gently shooed Charlotte and her powder brush from my forehead. "Deal."

"All right then, _Isabella_."

"Knock it off, Edward."

"Back in sixty," Rose warned us, so we sobered up and settled in for the next round. As the reports continued, I felt the anxiety just kind of disappear, and found that I could simply focus on the stories and where Edward and I fell in-between them. It felt like a trapeze act, and I realized that I could trust him to catch me, because he seemed to sense when I was down to my last three or four words before the throw-over, and just picked it up seamlessly.

It felt natural. Unnaturally natural. And we allowed whatever freaky chemistry existed between us to dictate the flow, paying slightly less attention to Ben and the clock, and slightly more attention to the inherent rhythm of the segments. I had never felt more comfortable behind the desk in the year of fill-in work I'd done for Dan. This was right.

Nowhere was that sensation more immediately apparent than during our trip to the smart board, where we spent a few minutes playing with graphics and discussing the enormous obstacles in the path of health care reform before Edward introduced the first in our series of reports.

"It's like you're having news sex out there," Emmett called, and I was thrilled that the pre-taped piece was still running, because I could feel my face burning.

"Our stories are smarter than we are, as it turns out," Edward muttered.

"Once again, still hearing you," Ben cheerfully reminded him, and the studio burst into a fresh round of laughter.

"For the love of God. Please shut up," I begged him.

Edward handled the outro for the healthcare piece, and we went into our final commercial break of the broadcast.

"Home stretch," Rose grinned. "Bella, you've got this last one, right?"

"Yeah, it's me," I confirmed, anxious to finish out the broadcast, get Peter's notes, and escape Edward's lips before I let myself think about what nice lips they were, and the nice things they made me feel.

"Back in thirty," Ben warned us, and then Rose cued me to Camera Two. "Finally this evening, from the CERN laboratory in Geneva, news that the first soft test of the repaired Hadron collider was successful. A cooperative effort among sixty nations around the globe, CERN and its various programs are looking to give us some insight into what our universe is made of, and how it came to exist. From the Brookhaven Laboratory on Long Island, Sandra Williams explains the science CERN is using to solve the biggest mysteries we face."

Sandy's piece started to roll, and I slumped back in my chair. "Four minutes, and we're out. Four minutes." I could feel the victory adrenaline start to kick in, and it made me almost giddy with relief. I just wanted to coast now, and take these last few minutes before we signed off to look around and appreciate how far I'd come in such a short span of time. I doubted the view from the summit of Everest would have looked as good to me as the view from my chair did at that moment.

Sandy's voice continued to echo through the studio. "This morning's test was a low-intensity lead ion collision, tied to the lab's ALICE program, which is hoping to isolate and define free quark-gluon plasma to see what it might have behaved like shortly after the Big Bang. Scientists believe that quark-gluon plasma is a kind of infant matter, or what came before the atoms which make up the matter we see all around us today. When ALICE ramps up to full speed, the temperatures in the collision will be roughly 100,000 times hotter than the Sun, but for now, a simple fender bender was all they were hoping for, and they got it."

The half of my brain which was listening to the report heard "ALICE", and immediately reminded me that as of seven this evening, I was officially past the first rush for the new show, and could finally find some time to work out what was giving her those nightmares.

I looked over at Edward as Sandy was winding down her report to see if Alice's name had had a similar effect on him, but when I focused on him, his face looked strangely arrested.

"Geneva," was all he said, and in that second, everything clicked in my head.

Geneva, Switzerland. The home base for CERN. The home base for -

"ALICE. In Switzerland," I answered, and grabbed Edward's thigh under the desk, pretty sure that while the broadcast might shortly be over, my night had really just begun.

# # #

A/N - Thank you all so, so much for your wonderful reviews and recommendations and favoriting and alerting. I wish I had the time to answer each and every one of you, but if I did, you'd probably get an update from me every six months. If you want to work it that way, I'm game, but I'm pretty sure that's not why you're here. Just please know that I read every review, and they make me so ridiculously happy. littlesecret84 and ciaobella27 read this before you do. I love them. I wish they lived with me.

The news events reported here actually occurred, but they occurred on October 27 and October 28, 2009 instead of Monday, October 26, 2009. "Flycam" is the camera I earlier referred to when I was describing the studio in Chapter 10. It's ceiling-mounted and runs on a track. "Extemp" is extemporaneous speech, in which the speaker(s) must discuss an issue in current affairs without having written or planned the speech in advance. An "outro" is the back-sell on a story, or what a newscaster will say as a final message on a report before moving on to other reports.

We've reached the science portion of our entertainment. Don't run away - I promise I won't make it icky. CERN is real, as is ALICE. If you're not a nut like me, and you don't want to spend your leisure time reading all about the miracle of theoretical physics, **you should watch this video**: http:/www (dot)youtube(dot)com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM&feature=related Why should you watch it? You should watch it because it will explain the whole thing to you. In a rap song. And it's cool. I have it memorized, and like to scare people by getting my super-nerd rap on when they least expect it. If you don't watch the video, you'll still be able to follow along, but the video is fantastic and funny. Humor me, please.

I'll shut up now. Come hang in my VIP cabin on ADifferentForest if you want to chat, or find me on Twitter (WriteOnTime123).


	14. Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out

# # #

Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out

It's remarkable how one second can contain so many things. The merest flicker of an eyelash of time, and yet in that flicker, everything coalesces and morphs and combines to change your world and everything in it.

In one second, I'd connected Alice to Switzerland and grabbed Edward's thigh to communicate the magnitude of my discovery, while Sandy's piece from Brookhaven had come to an end. The red light on Camera One blinked on, displaying Edward's startled face.

"Hey now," he said, then cleared his throat as I yanked my hand away from his body, praying to God and anyone else who might be willing to help me out that the camera angle prevented this from being a two-shot. Emmett's sharp eyes caught all, and I heard him stifle a snort.

"Thank you, Sandy," Edward continued, the only hint that he was remotely thrown off-balance occurring when he slid his leg over to deliver a gentle kick to my shin. "That's the news for this evening. On behalf of myself and my new colleague, Isabella Swan, we'd like to thank you for joining us. Good night."

Camera Two pulled out for a two-shot, and I heard Ben cue the flycam for the outro. Edward and I sat at the desk while the credits rolled, pretending to be absorbed in the monitors in front of us.

"And we're out," Ben announced in my ear. "Feel free to go ahead and fondle each other."

Edward turned to me, but I quickly shook my head at him. "Later," I whispered harshly. The last thing I needed now was to try to think through any connection between my Alice and CERN's ALICE in front of people who were counting on me to not be completely insane. He grimaced, but one brief nod of his head told me he agreed.

Peter made his way over to the front of the desk as we were divesting ourselves of our earpieces. "You two make me so, so happy. Well, except for that sign-off, which was a little too game-show for me. Work on that, okay?"

"My fault entirely," Edward was all contrition. "I got distracted, and forgot to be resistible for a second there. I feel so objectified. I'm kind of okay with it, though."

"You were pretty resistible from where I was standing," Rose commented with a grin as she walked up to us to collect our earpieces. "Good show, though. Peter, do you need the camera ops to hang around? If not, I'll cut them loose for dinner and meet you up in control?"

Peter nodded at her as Emmett and Tanya joined us. Emmett reached out to touch the departing Rose's arm, but apparently thought better of the action before he actually made contact, and withdrew his hand again.

"Hello, Rose," he said instead, his tone uncharacteristically bland, the expression on his face even more uncharacteristically cautious.

"Emmett." Her answer was a reasonably polite acknowledgement, but nothing more, which was as uncharacteristic of the cool-but-friendly face she showed everyone else on the staff as Emmett's sudden, cautious monotone. She eyed him impassively for a moment before turning around and walking away to release the camera ops, and I watched his eyes follow her.

"Not bad," Tanya observed, blithely and deliberately interrupting the suddenly interesting dynamic, much to Emmett's apparent relief. "Edward, you look like grown-up for first time. You even act like grown-up. I don't know you like this. Is not natural. Come - put your play clothes back on. Let's go celebrate."

Peter held his hand up to indicate that we were not going anywhere until he'd spoken. He gave us some notes, the first of which involved an acerbic reminder about not grabbing each other while the eyes of forty of fifty million viewers were on us, and the rest of which involved things like crossing to the front of the desk when we were done at the smart boards so that the show logo on the deskfront appeared in-frame with us. Although it was a massive struggle for him, I could see Edward battle back against whatever obnoxious comment he was dying to make about the grabbing, and I was so thankful that he managed to win out and keep his mouth closed, because there were bigger fish to fry right now.

I was both exhausted and keyed up, and there were so many things buzzing around in my head. If Alice was dreaming about CERN, and something awful was set to happen there, I needed to figure out what that place actually did and what could possibly go wrong. I didn't know the first thing about particle physics, let alone what that facility was hoping to accomplish with it. All I wanted to do was to go somewhere quiet and figure out a plan of action, but that wasn't in the cards because Peter was hell-bent on taking us out with some network brass to celebrate the launch.

Dinner turned into drinks, and by ten o'clock, I'd run out of gas. Edward and I hadn't had a single moment to ourselves, making any meaningful conversation impossible. I finally pushed back from the table and excused myself for the night.

Edward stood up with me, but I gave him a sharp look and he sat back down with an irritated sigh. We were the only two people at the table who could have passed a breathalyzer test. All around us, there was back-slapping and laughing and lots and lots of alcohol, but both of us stuck to discreetly-harmless beverages like cranberry juice and seltzer, or near-beer. As excited as I'd been that the show went off so well, it absolutely paled in comparison to the excitement of finally, finally, possibly having a lead on something which could liberate my friend from her forced captivity. I wanted to scream with frustration, and it shocked me to realize that the frustration stemmed almost entirely from the fact that I couldn't openly discuss and conjecture with Edward.

Just like that, my brain had hopped off a unicycle and dragged me by the hand to point with longing at the shiny new two-seater. My wanting to kiss him and be close to him was one thing, and something I had at least some small hope of controlling; my feeling the need to share a story this personal with him was quite another, and in my mind, infinitely more intimate and disturbing, because I realized that what I wanted most from Edward wasn't what was on the outside.

I flagged down a cab and collapsed into the back seat, giving the driver my address and staring blankly at the color-blocked grids of midtown Manhattan streets on the map which was screwed into the back rest in front of me. I decided that the first order of business was to ferret out someone who could explain to me what CERN was all about, so that I had some reference for the new world I was going to have to explore in order to get the answers I needed. I knew in my gut that I was on the right track, and that this was the ALICE we'd been looking for. What this ALICE was capable of doing, and the manner in which it might do it, were still a mystery, but I knew that my friend Alice was safe.

There was nobody in the newsroom I could look to for guidance. The whole story sounded insane, and I was obviously predisposed to believing it; I could only imagine what an outsider might think if I displayed a sudden tin-foil-hat interest in what might go wrong with these experiments in Geneva. I needed someone who wouldn't want to know _why_ I was interested, and I needed someone who was close enough to the subject to be able to speak with some degree of competency about potential risks.

In desperation, I fired off an email to Andrew, letting him know that I was doing some research and wanted to speak with a physicist for background information. I figured that at the very least, Andrew had access to the internal emails for the physics professors at Columbia, and with any luck, he might be able to hook me up with a likely candidate. To my surprise, my phone pinged a few blocks later with an answer from him, telling me that he'd scout around for someone and get back to me as quickly as possible. He also reminded me that he wanted to take Edward and myself out to dinner the following week to celebrate the launch of the new show.

I counter-offered lunch the following day, because the sooner I had Andrew in front of me, the sooner I knew he'd dig up someone from the Physics Department to give me a crash-course in all things CERN. Andrew's enthusiastic acceptance flew back into my inbox, and I invited him up to the newsroom so that I could offer him a quick look around before we headed out to eat.

I started to slip my phone back into my bag when it chimed again with a new text message:

**Are we going to talk about this, or are you planning to save the universe all by yourself? No fair, glory hog. E.**

Looking at these words on the screen, I was again struck by the fact that he'd kissed me, and it was amazing, and I wanted him to help me figure this out, but there was no way in hell I was going to suggest getting together right now.

**Tomorrow, okay? I'm really exhausted. B.**

Too exhausted to think about Alice. Too exhausted to think about Edward. Too exhausted for anything more than bed and a few hours of blissful nothingness, even though I was pretty sure my brain would refuse to shut off for any length of time.

**Quit thinking. Your text sounded constipated. Sleep, scaredy-cat. I'll deal with you tomorrow. E.**

I really must have been tired, because the text made me smile. I stuffed the phone back into my bag, stumbled out of the cab, and into my building, and into my apartment, and into my bed, where I wrestled my brain into a half-Nelson and managed to pin it to the mat for five solid hours.

Tuesday morning found my bleary eyes before I was ready for it, but a shower and another Red Bull brought me back to life. As I dressed for work, I tried to develop a game plan for the day. It went something like this:

Avoid being alone with Edward so that I wouldn't accidentally leap on him.

Get Edward alone so that we could talk about ALICE.

Have lunch with Andrew and make an informational love connection with a physicist.

Liberate Alice from the mental institution.

Do a news show.

Admittedly, the how-to of both avoiding close quarters with Edward and encouraging them was a not-inconsiderable dilemma, one for which I had no immediate solution. Furthermore, I suspected that no matter what solution I came up with, Edward would be more than happy to raze it to the ground without a second's hesitation, anyway. I would have to play it by ear.

I walked the gauntlet of the bullpen to enthusiastic catcalls from the guys, trying to rile me up about being Big Time. I deflected them with my raised middle fingers and a command that they get back to their pathetic lives, but grinned because I knew that their teasing meant we were as all right as we'd ever been.

"Good morning, Kathy," I said as I walked through the main door of the office suite, then paused because she had her head down and appeared to be shaking. It quickly became apparent that she was, in fact, laughing her ass off, and she motioned me over to her desk.

"Oh my God, it's priceless. Come see."

I stepped around to her side of the desk and saw that she had the show's new Twitter account open in her browser. Peter had asked the PR department to get the show more active on the social-networking front, and as a result, we now had a presence on everything from Facebook to Netlog and Twitter to Yammer. Kathy had clicked on the "at" mentions for the show, and we were staring at dozens and dozens of "at" tweets by a user who went by the name "culloony".

"She's so, so crazy, and there's plenty more where she came from. This is just - it's the most wonderful thing I've ever seen," Kathy gasped between laughs.

"What are they all -" I started to say, and then I read the tweets. They were all about Edward; they were all about Edward, and how gorgeous he was.

"They're calling him 'NewsFox'," Kathy snorted. "Listen, I know you two are kissing and whatever, and you're probably on his side, but you need to know I'm going to torture him with this stuff. A lot."

Edward sailed through the door as these words were leaving Kathy's lips. "_Isabella_," he grinned, and then turned on Kathy. "Harpy. You look cheerful. Did you eat a small child for breakfast or something?"

"Edward, don't -" I put my hand out to warn him, but the woman seated next to me seemed only too delighted that he'd fired the first shot.

"Good morning, Mr. Cullen. _Tiger Beat_ magazine called. They want to know what your idea of a dream date might be." Her smile was so sweet.

Edward tilted his head to the side. "Okay, so it wasn't a small child for breakfast, just your usual Crazy Loops. Can I have my real messages, if you're not too busy being completely insane?"

Kathy stood up. "Oh, anything for you, NewsFox." She handed him a stack of message slips, then settled herself back down in her chair and, waiting patiently, looked at him.

"Stop calling me that," he frowned.

"I don't think I will, though. You're a trending topic, and this place is all about what makes the news."

Totally mystified, he turned back to me. "Do you understand a word she's saying?"

"You have a fan club on Twitter. Everywhere else, too, I'm guessing. They're calling you 'NewsFox', and one of the ringleaders is named Culloony," I explained.

"You can't be serious. Show me." He joined us behind the desk, where Kathy helpfully scrolled through the last hour or two worth of tweets concerning him. "Oh, Jesus," he groaned. "They're speculating on the size of - can they even do that here? How the hell do we stop this?" He glared at Kathy. "Figure out how to make it stop, and then stop it."

"Watch your tone, News Beef - I have the password for this account, and I'm happy to answer some of these tweets on your behalf." The sweet smile had vanished, and was replaced with a look of triumph so potent that I almost expected a ticker-tape parade to start circling her desk.

"I'm a serious goddamned journalist. I can't have people talking about - see, this is why I like to fly under the radar," he fumed. "I'm calling Peter."

Kathy cackled while Edward strode to his office and slammed the door closed. Shaking my head, I collected my messages and walked into my office, dumping everything I was holding and sifting quickly through the stack of calls. I pulled my laptop out of its case and plugged in the wireless dongle so that I could do some research away from the prying eyes of the network's server.

Some time later, I looked up at my door to find Edward standing there, watching me.

"Apparently, there's nothing they can do about this situation," he announced.

"Why do you care? I mean, it's not as though you've never traded on your looks before," I shrugged, not wanting to acknowledge that his sudden heartthrob status made me at all uncomfortable about what had happened between us the previous day. If I hadn't already been intimidated by his appearance, this would certainly have sent me over the edge.

He moved to stand in front of my desk. "_Because_, it's one thing for me to work some one-on-one charm when I need to get somewhere with a story. This situation is revolting because it's about me, and not about the news. It's as though it doesn't matter what the hell I'm saying or doing. I'm just a pretty piece of meat."

"Welcome to the wonderful world of women, Edward. At least you're not expected to remove ninety percent of your body hair."

"Can we just...not talk about this? I want to talk about what happened yesterday, with Alice." He parked his hip on the corner of my desk. "So, we think that what Alice saw was actually something going on at CERN?"

I exhaled and shifted my laptop screen so that he could see it as well. "I don't know. It just feels right. I'm just getting started on some background stuff, but if it's true, I have no idea how we're going to get in there and stop it. This program is massive."

Edward nodded. "I agree. It's not like we can stroll in there and say 'Hey, science guys, we know this girl who had a dream that you were doing something bad with subatomic whatsits, so shut it down, please.'"

"That might work if all the scientists in question follow culloony on Twitter."

"Seriously, don't," he cautioned me, crossing his arms over his chest. "What's the plan?"

"Well, I think the first thing I need to do is learn more about what the hell goes on in that place. I don't have the first clue about any of this stuff, so I need to get my hands on someone who does. I'm having lunch with Andrew Ellington today; he said he'd track down someone from the physics department at Columbia for me to interrogate." I swung the laptop back in my direction, then looked up to see that Edward had a strange expression on his face.

"You're having lunch with Andrew today?"

"Yes, I am. I just said I was. Are you joining us? He'll be up here at 12:30."

He appeared to be deep in thought for a moment, his brow furrowed and mouth set in a hard line. Finally, he shrugged, stood up, and said, "I think...not. I've got a thing around then. But tell him I said 'hi', and we'll catch up soon, all right?"

He was almost at the door before he turned around and headed back to me. "Ah, wait a minute. I knew there was something I was forgetting."

"Edward," I warned him, and slid my chair further away from the desk, which I realized in hindsight only created better access to me. "We talked about this. I told you I need some time to think about it."

Edward stood directly in front of me, my eyes level with his...crotch...and then he bent down to put his face close to mine. Honestly, I was at a loss as to which was more visually interesting.

"Yes, I heard you. You talked about it. But you know what your problem is? You don't do well with options. Give you an option, and your brain starts making that annoying whirring sound, and before you know it, you've talked yourself out of whatever it is you're doing. So I'm not sure that giving you an option is the best course of action. Besides, I told you last night I was going to kiss you no matter what happened when the show was over, and then we got distracted by Geneva, so I owe you. But give me your hand, please."

This threw my panicked brain for a loop. "What?"

He chuckled. "Oh, sweetheart. You ask a lot of questions, but they're the wrong questions. When you ask the right question, as I suspect you will all too soon now, I'll give you an answer. In the meantime, your hand. Please."

The hand seemed like a safe enough thing to surrender to him, because hands were for shaking, and for high-fiving, and for slapping, and none of those things were even remotely dangerous as far as I was concerned, so I lifted up my right hand and placed it in his waiting one. I should have known that it was a mistake; I'm not entirely sure I would have changed anything even if I had known. Edward bent his head over my hand and seemed to study it for a moment, turning it slightly this way, then that, but never losing his gentle grip. Then he lifted it to his lips, and ran them lightly over the back of my hand before kissing each knuckle. He took his time. He was devastatingly thorough. And when he was finished with the back of my hand, he turned it over and inflicted the same sweet torture on my palm, his mouth finishing its survey at the inside of my wrist, where I could have sworn he whispered something into the skin before his lips administered their farewell.

"I said I would kiss you," he murmured, looking back up at me with those unreadable green eyes. "And for the record, there isn't a single part of you I'm not interested in kissing, so the appropriate question was really 'where?', and not 'what?'."

When he finally released me, my entire arm just sort of flopped down into my lap, and he strolled out the door with a reminder to send his best to Andrew. And I began to understand the horrible truth of the matter, which was that when it came to Edward, any defense I imagined I had was the merest pretense. There wasn't a nerve-ending in my entire body that wasn't completely overthrown by what he's just done to my hand; muscle, bone, organs, and tissue all held a vote, and had decided as one to turn into a quivering mass of _morepleaseohGodyes_. It wasn't a question of whether or not my brain, the lone holdout, would be able to filibuster indefinitely. I knew I'd eventually cave, even if it was stupid, and even if I would end up emotional road-kill on the other side of the experience.

But he didn't have to know that yet. And I was going to hold on in the last ditch until he finally flushed me out.

Andrew was punctual. He stepped off the elevator at 12:27, breathing deeply, as though he could absorb the energy and chaos of the bullpen in through his lungs. I was standing at Paul's desk, going through some issues on the newly-announced White House initiative to upgrade the nation's energy grid by infusing dollars into development and production of green energy sources. I caught Andrew's eye and waved him over to us.

"Sugar Daddy?" Paul smirked.

"J-School professor," I responded, thumping him on the shoulder.

"Kinky."

"Cool it - he thinks you guys have integrity," I warned him, then turned to greet Andrew with a smile.

"There's my girl," Andrew said, grabbing me lightly on the shoulder and giving me a brief peck on the cheek. "I'm so proud of you. Five years, Bella. Five years from the classroom to the big desk. Now that's impressive."

I introduced him to Paul, who shook his hand and squinted at him in an effort to look intimidating. I couldn't help but laugh, and linked arms with Andrew to lead him over to my office.

When we got to the suite's reception area, I pointed out Edward's office, then moved my arm to point to mine, letting him know I just needed to run in and grab my purse before we headed upstairs to the executive restaurant on the Sky Floor. Andrew looked around expectantly.

"Where's Edward? Isn't he joining us?"

I shook my head. "No - sorry - he said he had a thing around now. He did ask me to tell you hello and said that he'd catch up with you soon. Maybe we can still do that dinner next week?"

"Yeah, sure - any evening works for me, and it'll beat the hell out of something from my freezer."

"I'll get his avails and we'll work out a night," I promised. "Ready? I'm taking you upstairs to the executive dining room. We'll pretend we don't feel out of place, and eat our lunch off of actual plates like civilized people."

Andrew laughed and followed me back out to the elevator. We were hoisted up to the Sky Floor and ushered over to a cozy table on the west side of the cafeteria, so that we could eat and stare out over the water of the Hudson River. The dining room was crowded, but not unpleasantly so, because it was laid out to ensure reasonable privacy between tables. I imagined that a lot of hush-hush deals were done up here; a lot of backstabbing and plotting and scenario-building. If Machiavelli had been a chef, he'd have run the kitchen of this restaurant.

I watched Andrew tuck in to his tarted-up Chicken Divan. "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you, Andrew. I know you hate it when I thank you, but you're going to hear it again, so brace yourself: thank you. For your faith in me, and for giving me this opportunity in the first place. I feel lucky to have had you as a mentor, and luckier still to be able to call you my friend."

He grinned. "Oh my God, Bella - that was a seriously formal speech. I feel so respectable now."

I smiled back and considered him. Andrew had the requisite pallor of all academicians, along with the graying hair and the absent-minded dress code, but despite the fact that he'd been teaching for at least two decades, his eyes retained so much excitement and interest and humor. He was alive in his chosen field, and it thrilled me that I could sit here and prove his instincts correct.

"Yeah, well, we're lunching in a power palace. I didn't want to just punch you on the shoulder. How's life on campus?"

"Good, good. Well, you know - departmental bullshit, but other than that, it's good. The kids keep coming, and I keep disillusioning them. But I want to hear about you; how are things working out with Edward?"

How were things working out with Edward? "I think things are going well," I said cautiously after a moment. "He's...challenging sometimes, but he's obviously brilliant. Kansas was..."

"Yeah. Kansas. You put Edward in the middle of a situation where everything's falling apart and people are freaking out, and he's absolutely in his element. And you! I know you probably aren't ready to talk about it, but one day, I really want you to guest-lecture for me and tell the students about what the rescue in MacPherson was like for you." I opened my mouth to let him know that wasn't going to happen in the near future because I was still a little rocked by the whole thing, but he reached out and put his hand on my forearm. "I know, Bella. It's okay. Not now. But when you have a little distance from it, please consider it, as a favor to me."

I nodded, casting desperately about for a change in subject. "Hey, so Edward had your class, too? I started to ask him about it once, and then we got distracted. I'll bet he was disruptive, but he charmed his way out of it, right? I mean, I barely know him, but he's got a way of getting under your skin."

Andrew gave me a blank look, then lowered his fork. "You really don't know the story? Hah. How like him that is," he smiled and shook his head. "I should probably keep my mouth shut, because if he hasn't told you, I'm sure he's got his reasons."

As he was talking, all of my senses sat up and took notice, and suddenly, Andrew became less a friend and more a subject. "Oh, come on. You can't leave me hanging like that," I cajoled. "Give me something."

He paused for a moment to consider whether or not he was going to drop it or move forward, and I tried not to look too eager for him to spill everything he knew. Finally, he scratched his cheek and then placed his forearms on the table on either side of his plate in a universal "Here comes the real deal" posture.

"I've known the Cullens forever. Carlisle and I were roommates at Yale; my sister set him up with Esme, so we're practically family in some ways, I guess. I've always been a kind of adopted uncle to Edward. I mean, we're close enough so that I had to clear it with the department before I could have Edward in my class, and everything he submitted was passed through review after I graded it.

"He's always been on the move, ever since the day he was born. I don't know what lit the fire under him, because if any kid had a reason to hang around at home, it was Edward. Carlisle and Esme are like the coolest version of Ozzie and Harriet you'll ever see, and they spoiled him rotten. But Edward couldn't wait to get out into the world; the minute he was out of school, he signed on with the wire service and he was _gone_, man.

"I haven't seen him back here for more than a brief visit in almost ten years, so the fact that he agreed to take the anchor gig shocked just about everyone. Well, shocked and thrilled, especially Esme, who can't stand to have her precious little one running all over the planet," he smiled. "You know she wants him to be happy, but she'd much rather he be happy and geographically-convenient at the same time."

I was absolutely buzzing, but tried to keep it together while Andrew shared Edward's backstory. Not wanting to disturb his groove, I maintained an even expression and just nodded my head to encourage him to continue.

"Ah. Anyway, it shocked everyone - except me, because when I heard you were going to be his co-anchor, all the pieces started falling into place."

Now it was my turn to be shocked. "I don't get it. We'd never even met before Dan's funeral. I mean, I obviously knew his work, but that was about it. What the hell do I have to do with anything?"

Andrew dropped his gaze down to his plate and smiled. "Yeah, this is where I think I need to shut up, because I don't know anything for sure, and my speculation isn't worth a damn. I will say this, though: Edward's pretty tough to read, but I've known him for a long, long time, and I see more than he thinks I do. You might not have known him before Dan's funeral, but it doesn't necessarily follow that he didn't know about _you_ before then. In fact, I can sort of take credit for introducing you two, but I'll just let him tell that story whenever he gets around to it."

"You can't seriously expect to drop it here." I tried to keep from shrieking, and hoped that I was successful. "Why haven't you mentioned this before now? It's not as though we don't see each other at least a few times a year. What the hell, Andrew?"

The way I was ripping into him seemed to amuse him to no small degree, which only served to piss me off. "I'm sorry, Bella," he laughed. "Honestly, I don't mean to drive you crazy. But until he got back into town, it was just me and a theory, and there wasn't much of a point to mentioning it to anyone. Now I'm really going to shut up, except to say that it serves him right."

With that, he pointedly turned his attention back to his Chicken Divan, leaving no room for doubt that the subject was closed. We ate in silence for a few moments while I struggled to get my temper under control. In one sense, I felt a bit betrayed by Andrew, who was sticking to some mysterious code of brotherhood. In another sense, what he'd just shared with me made me realize that Edward probably suspected what was going to happen at this lunch, which was why he conveniently excused himself. And now I understood what he'd meant about my having asked the wrong questions, because the question he wanted to answer was clearly not _why_ he'd insisted I be his co-anchor, but _when_ he'd decided that he'd want to work with me and _how_ he'd reached that decision.

I'd never even really considered that he might have known who I was much before we'd met that day. I remembered he'd told me that he hadn't seen much of my work during our first - and ridiculously tense - conversation. That fact had been puzzling me for weeks, and I'd almost let myself assume that he thought putting himself next to a relatively-unknown rookie was the smartest move he could make, because I had experience where he lacked it, and vice versa given everything he'd achieved in field reporting. Well, I'd put it down to that, and also sort of hoped that someone, somewhere, had been singing my praises loudly enough to make Edward sit up and have faith that I wouldn't be a total failure as his counterpart. And, too, I'd feared that he thought he could somehow control everything, as Peter had made it clear to me from the earliest negotiations that Edward was the prize and I was a bit of a tag-along.

The rest of the lunch went off in a slightly stilted fashion, but I managed to extract a promise from Andrew that he'd have a name from the physics department for me by no later than the end of the week.

As we headed back to the elevator bank, Andrew placed his hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry, Bella. I really am. Maybe I should have kept my trap shut about Edward, but I _think_, knowing him, that he was probably counting on my knowing more than I let on. His mind is full of strange tunnels, but one thing I'll say for him is that he sees through people better and faster than anyone I've ever met. Try not to be too hard on him, and really try not to hate me."

"I don't hate you," I said with a resigned sigh. "I'm just - I don't know. I'm ticked off because I feel as though I'm being deliberately kept in the dark on things. It's bullshit."

The grip on my shoulder tightened. "I'm sure it's frustrating. He's frustrating, and a slow learner in some ways, all evidence to the contrary. The good news is that once he catches on, he catches up in a hurry. You're one of the smartest people I know. For the record, I think it serves you right, too." He grinned at me, and I couldn't help laughing at him.

We parted company in the elevator, Andrew opting to continue his ride down to the lobby, but leaving me with instructions to tell Edward that he ever tried ducking out again, he'd kick his ass for him. My heart was suddenly pounding as I walked across the floor to our office suite. I wasn't at all sure that I was ready to ask any questions at all, but the better part of me realized that when it came to Edward, I was already too far gone to pretend this wasn't...something. No matter what he called me, I had never been a chicken. I wasn't about to start clucking now, just because for the first time in my life, I'd actually found someone other than Alice or my parents who could really destroy me if they chose to.

Kathy was on the phone when I walked in, but she handed me a stack of messages and a memo from Peter about a meeting at three to go through the overnight numbers. He'd punctuated it with several exclamation points, so I assumed that the news was exciting. Steeling myself, I looked over into Edward's office, and saw him spinning slightly in his chair, his back toward me and the black spiral cord of the telephone handset draped over his shoulder.

'Right. Do this,' I commanded myself, and forced my body to walk those few steps into his office, closing the door behind me. Edward swiveled around to face me at the sound of the closing door, stopping his conversation mid-sentence to appraise my expression and calculate where I might be on the road to discovering what the hell was happening in his head. Whatever he saw there made him wrap up his phone call in a hurry, and after replacing the handset on the phone base, he screwed his lips up into a wry grin.

"That clever bastard," he muttered, then exhaled loudly and gave his desk two sharp raps before indicating that I should take the seat in front of him. As I sat, he chewed thoughtfully on his lip for a moment, then shrugged. "I could be wrong about this sweetheart, but I'm going to guess you've got a question or two for me. Let's have them."

"When?"

His answering smile was so bright and so boyish that I had to look away for a second in order to keep my grip on the situation. "And there it is, at last," he marveled. "Christ, so this is what it looks like when the chickens come home to roost. Interesting."

"That's not an answer, Edward."

"You're absolutely right, and I did promise you an answer, didn't I? Okay, then: May, 2004. Wow, that's actually a bit of a relief to get out. I wasn't expecting that."

My eyes widened in shock. "When did you see me in May 2004? I'm pretty sure I would have remembered meeting you, which means that I'm equally sure we never met until that day at the memorial."

He scrubbed his hands over his face and then steepled his fingers against his chin. "You don't remember meeting me because you weren't there - not really, anyway. I met Andrew for lunch on campus, and he insisted I watch your Masters project."

I cast my mind back to that final semester, recalling the three months I'd spent investigating illegal Asian immigrants around the city. I'd done literally thousands of stories since then, but that one was special to me because it was the first extended piece I'd ever done, and because the people I met while doing it, those scared, hopeful, hopeless people living in the most squalid conditions imaginable and forced to work for a freedom they'd probably never actually get to enjoy, had moved me and angered me on a very personal level.

"Okay, so you saw my Masters project. What then?"

Edward shook his head at me. "You really don't get how good you are, do you? Andrew saw it, and he couldn't wait to show it to me. I didn't want to see it, but five minutes into the thing, I couldn't look away. And the minute it was over, I ran like hell. Caught an earlier flight out of town, which made my mother pretty sad, but it couldn't be helped. To say that I had a strong reaction to you is, um, slightly understating the matter."

"I still don't get it. I mean, all right, I'm not bad looking, but I'm no beauty queen. You didn't even _know_ me, and excuse me for saying it, but there's nothing about you that would suggest someone like me would be enough of a reason to scare your arrogant ass out of town."

He raised his eyebrows. "This really has very little to do with the way you _look_, Bella. I mean, you're very pretty, as it happens, but that's not why I'm here. I'm here because you're smart as hell, and you're brave, and passionate, and infuriating, and you don't let anyone do your thinking for you, and that makes you - Jesus, Bella, it makes you so beautiful, you have no idea," he took a sharp breath in. "I've had drop-dead gorgeous. It was drop-dead boring, and not one-tenth as attractive to me as you are."

His voice was almost ferocious toward the end of this revelation. A sound that was half-laugh, half-gasp escaped me, and I could literally feel my heart bouncing around beneath my rib cage. "Shut up," I whispered.

"Funny. All this time, I thought you wanted me to talk, and when I finally do, you tell me to shut up."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"Listen, this is probably a longer conversation than we've got time for right now. I'm not stalling, I swear, but I really think - later, maybe? After the show? Please?" I could see the uncertainty in his eyes, as though half of him was itching to rip off this Band-Aid while the other half of him wanted to have his mail forwarded to the nearest convenient cave. And I suddenly realized that as difficult as this was for me, it was equally as difficult for him, for reasons yet unknown to me, but he was making an effort. Frankly, what he'd said so far was enough to process for the moment, so I nodded my head.

"Later. Okay, later. But later, Edward - not next week, or whenever."

"Later, definitely," he nodded back, taking another deep breath. "Er, so, did Andrew find a physicist for you?"

We awkwardly segued into a conversation about CERN, and I let him know that Andrew promised to hand over a physicist by Friday. Since Edward now seemed to be able to reach Jasper without the benefit of EMPs and skulking around hospital hallways, I asked him if he thought he could get a message through to Alice about what was going on, or whether it might be better to wait until our Saturday rendezvous with Jasper. While I hated to think of Alice languishing at Greymore, I knew that she was in good company, and a few extra days in there to ensure a quick and hassle-free exit wouldn't be the worst thing in the whole world.

"I think maybe we should wait until after we've at least spoken to the physicist," Edward suggested. "Back the instinct up with facts. Will Alice kill you for making her wait?"

"Probably, but I'll deal with her - I know her weak spots."

His answering smile was a soft one. "I'll just bet you do." Then he stood up, and I recognized this signal from him as the terminus of our conversation. "We should probably do something around here involving the show for a little while, no?"

"Probably," I agreed, and stood up to make my exit. "Did you get the note from Peter about the three o'clock to go through the overnights?"

"Mmmhmm. Three o'clock. He seems excited, so we couldn't have screwed it up too badly."

"I'm pretty sure we were amazing, but we'll let him tell us that." I started to turn toward the door, but something suddenly occurred to me, and I found myself unable to refrain from asking one final, small question.

Edward saw me hesitate, and tilted his head forward in answer. "What's up?"

"Before - when we were in my office, and you were, you know, with my hand..." I stuttered, mangling the words as the sudden recollection of what that felt like washed over me.

"What about it?"

Shaking my head to get a grip on myself, I soldiered on. "I could have sworn you said something. To my wrist. What did you say?"

His hand covered his mouth for a moment, as though he was trying to hold the words back, but he lowered it and made another effort to let me into his head. "I said, 'please, don't hate me'."

# # #

A/N - Yeah, please, don't hate me. Anyway...littlesecret84 and ciaobella27 put up with me, read this in bits and pieces, then again after I assemble it with a hex wrench from IKEA, and let me know whether or not it's ridiculous. Are they awesome? Yes, they are - so, so awesome. AngryBadgerGirl puts on her papal mitre and swings some incense in my direction while she mutters in the ancient language of dead writers from the old "Steve Allen" show.

Thank you so, so much for reading, and reviewing, and recommending this story. You are all just amazing, and I'm lucky to have you as readers.


	15. Who, What, Where, When, Why

Er, hold on tight...

# # #

Who, What, Where, When, Why

Two glasses of Silver Oak Alexander Valley cabernet sat on the table between us. The restaurant was reasonably quiet, the dinner rush having cleared out an hour or so earlier, leaving the place with a few tables full of lingerers intent on savoring dessert and conversation. The raucous crowd of hedge fund frat boys at the twelve-top had just departed, leaving the air behind them blissfully free of "that's what she said" jokes and attendant braying laughter.

"This is so weird," I said, after the waitress had taken our orders and relieved us of the pretty parchment menus.

Edward leaned forward in his chair, his posture indicating that he was ready to catch a secret if I felt the need to share one with him, but tonight was not about my secrets. "What's weird?"

I stared down into the carnelian liquid filling the glass in front of me before forcing myself to look at him again. "I'm nervous. I don't know what you're going to tell me."

His lips curved into another grin, this one slightly embarrassed and self-mocking. "Yes, well, if you think _you're_ nervous, you can just imagine what's happening on my side of the table. I wasn't kidding when I told you that I never talk. Ever. I know I have to, and I know I owe it to you, but that doesn't mean it's not going to cost me a considerable effort."

Playing it off with a joke seemed like the obvious option. "Wow, a NewsFox exclusive, then. I'm honored."

"You'll be picking your appetizer out of your hair for weeks if you say that again."

It was too easy to get side-tracked into these sorts of conversations with him. There was a trampoline nature to our dealings — a kind of force/impact/react chain of events — that made it so, so tempting to go there, but "there" wasn't going to make me any smarter about Edward Cullen, so I let it go.

He sighed and rubbed his left eyebrow. His tell, from the poker game in DC; he really was nervous, too. And the sight of him so off-balance threw me. Had I done that? Did I really have that sort of effect on him? I wasn't accustomed to wielding this power. It felt heavy in my hands, as though my ego needed stronger muscles to carry it with authority.

"Stop looking at me," he said suddenly, almost harshly, and then softened his tone. "Please. Jesus, this is hard enough without your eyes on me. I don't know how to do 'vulnerable'. It's not my thing. I'm so fucking uncomfortable right now; I'd rather be bivouacked along the Djedi with a gang of Libyan slave traders."

"Hey, thanks for that," I couldn't help laughing. "You really know how to sweet-talk a girl, Cullen."

"Sorry," he smiled. "It's true, though."

I nodded, hoping that the moment had served to ease a little of the discomfort, and then just waited him out. The hours upon hours I'd wasted over the past month wondering what the hell was going on behind those eyes made the moments he took now seem worthwhile. I wanted Edward's story more than I'd ever wanted a story in my life.

He took a deep breath and started shredding his cocktail napkin, presumably to give himself something other than me to focus on. "Since I don't know what Andrew told you, I'm just going to start this where it makes the most sense for me to start. I graduated J-School in '01, and the wire offered me a spot, so I took it and ran. I spent the next year or two on the craziest assignments they had. If it was something nobody else wanted to do, I'd do it; if it was happening where nobody else wanted to go, I went. After 9/11, I slept in caves on the Afghan border, on the ground, in trees, wherever and however. I went AWOL a lot, but the guys on the London Assignment desk liked me. They covered for me, and I just dug in." He looked briefly up at me and squinted, uncertain. "Is this boring?"

I stifled an outraged laugh. "It's the polar opposite of boring. Keep going."

"Right. Okay. Anyway, in April '03, I was covering the invasion. The whole thing was so fucked it wasn't even funny, but Army Ops and the press liaison ran it like a movie premiere. A lot of the press corps were staying at the Palestine Hotel, which was great, until some moron in an M1 Abrams tank decided to fire on the place. I was filing a report in my room when the mortars hit, and when I opened the door, I ran right into this big Russian guy in boxer shorts and a t-shirt that said 'Sixty-Nine degrees for Wash Genitals'. He had the wildest eyes I've ever seen, and hair to match; I mean, he looked like a serious psycho. He grinned at me and said 'You want get your ass shot off, or you want live? If you want live, better move now.' So I grabbed my laptop and camera and ran."

"Oleg?"

Edward nodded. "Oleg. It's not as though he got any saner the longer I knew him," he smiled, the tide in his own eyes rising with fond memories. "We got wrecked on haji juice that afternoon, and were a team from that moment on."

"Haji juice?" I shouldn't have interrupted him, I knew, but old instincts die hard.

"Iraqi moonshine," he explained. "So, we spent the rest of the year bumming around the planet together whenever possible. He was obsessed with the ethnic cleansing in Darfur, and railed about the fact that it was getting almost no coverage in the world press. We'd do what we had to do on assignment, but every free minute we had, we'd work leads on Darfur and develop stories to keep the feed fresh on the wire.

"By 2004, he'd joined the wire service, and we were on our way back to the London office after meeting with some contacts in Sudan. We got separated during a night of drinking in Madrid, and I ended up at the train station in Atocha. Terrorists blew up the train I was on, and that was that. I had a name."

The waitress returned with our appetizers. Edward absentmindedly stabbed his way around a plate full of antipasti, deep in thought.

"Sorry," he said again, after a while.

I kept my mouth shut for a change, merely nodding and doing my best to keep my focus either on my food or on the space approximately five inches in front of my plate. When I heard him inhale deeply, I risked raising my eyes to his face, and found that he was staring out through the restaurant window to the crowded street beyond.

"Oleg and Tanya became like a second family to me. Oh, she busted my balls when I first met her. I suppose she still does, but now it's more out of habit than anything else. I saw what they had — how they made it work, even when it was difficult, even when they had to really fight for it. And I was happy for them, you know? But it never really bothered me, because I'd never found anyone worth doing that for. Until now." His eyes returned from their aimless wander around the street to meet mine. "Until you. And a big part of me was hoping that the girl I saw in that masters project was some kind of mirage — that you'd turn out to be this shallow, ambitious, easy-road kind of person. But you're not, and I don't know how to say 'no' to that. Every time I touched base with Andrew, I'd ask about you. Every time. And you stayed here, at this network, in this office, so I figured it was safe to assume that you were more interested in being successful than in living for the news."

"Wow," I interrupted, stunned and goaded. "That really makes you sound like the worst kind of arrogant asshole."

Edward nodded and ducked his head down with a grin. "I know. I'm not even going to pretend that I'm not an arrogant asshole every now and then, Bella. For a change, you'll get no argument from me."

"Well, I guess I should be flattered that you found it in yourself to give me the time of day despite the fact that I stayed in New York, doing the job the way I wanted to do it instead of the way you thought it should be done."

"Hey, I'm sure you're having a blast making me feel like crap about this now, but try to settle down, okay? Remember that I told you this was more about me than it ever was about you." To further his point, he reached across the table and took my hand in his. "I don't mean to belittle or judge how you do what you do. I'm trying to explain the flawed thinking behind my behavior, and I'm trying to be honest with you."

"Oh," was my brilliant reply. "Um, okay. Sorry. Carry on." This was yet another side of him that I'd never before witnessed. Humble, Honest Edward was even more difficult to resist than Arrogant Asshole Edward. I could only conjecture that if there was a Serial Killer Edward, he was probably just as disarming as the other ones had been. "I have no idea why I'm always so ready to assume that you're making some kind of negative judgment about me."

"Well, that's an easy one," he smiled. "I'm generally giving you very good reasons to think it. But I meant what I said the other day. I'm going to try really, really hard not to put up roadblocks anymore. I don't know if that's going to solve anything, but if we end up hating each other, I want you to know right now it won't be because I'm not fully aware of how dedicated to this job you are. This is about me fighting with myself, not you. Okay, maybe it's about fighting with you a little bit, because hell, that's fun. But mostly, it's me fighting me."

"I need to tell you that most days, it's pretty tough to draw any kind of distinct line between those two things."

Our appetizer plates were vanished from in front of us, a busboy neatly removing imaginary crumbs with a scooper and refilling our water glasses. Edward had released my hand when the busboy came over, but once we were alone again, he motioned to me that he wanted it back. "I've never been a really 'grabby' person," he clarified as he reclaimed me. "This is kind of an insurance policy, because if I'm holding on to you, and you're holding on to me, neither one of us can bolt out of here before this conversation is over."

I actually snorted. "In the first place, I'm reasonably sure you're strong enough to pull away from me and flee if the mood strikes you. And in the second place, I'll have you note that you're the one who's holding my hand. I'm not holding yours. I'm not holding _you_, Edward. I'm not going to be that...whatever. That impediment. My ego might wobble around a little, but my pride never does." Oh, if I said it, it must be true. I willed the words into me, praying that they'd take root in my spine.

The pressure of his fingers increased against my skin. "Don't you think I know that?" His voice was low, and suddenly very, very serious. "Don't you think I know that if this goes pear-shaped, I will almost certainly be the responsible party? Believe me, I'm aware."

His free hand came up from where it rested on his thigh to scrub his cheek, then continued up toward the side of his head until he was tugging absentmindedly on his earlobe. " I've been on the move since the day I was born. I ran away from home a dozen times by the time I was in my late teens. It was a good home — it was a great home —but there was all this _stuff_ happening out there, and I couldn't wait to get to it. I still can't. When Dan died, and my father asked me to come back, I really, really didn't want to. About the only reason I could even stomach the thought was the prospect of working with you. I thought if I could just — just see you, and be disappointed in you, that it would justify everything, and I could leave again with a clear conscience, and be alone the way I've always been, with no baggage. So I agreed, but on the condition that you were the one sitting next to me in that chair."

"You set me up," I muttered, shaking my head. "I can't believe this whole time, you were just hoping I'd blow it to make you feel better about being a shiftless, unfettered...Oh. Well, shit." I thought back to my knee-jerk reaction when I'd first found out he'd insisted I fill the other anchor chair. I remembered that flush of pride, and how complimented I felt. I was an idiot; all he was hoping for was that he'd see me fail. My gut twisted, and I realized that I was leveled by the revelation that he was only concerned with proving some kind of point to himself. I felt betrayed, and stupid, because as it turned out, the only opportunity he was interested in giving me was the opportunity to fall on my face.

"You're so pig-headed," he said through his teeth. "God dammit, stop that." We were interrupted by the untimely arrival of our waitress, who dropped our main courses in front of us. My appetite had fled, and the food on the plate, while aesthetically pleasing, held no further allure for me.

"Everything okay here?" The waitress asked the question, the same one I'm sure she asked every single one of her customers to make sure they felt she was paying attention to their needs and honestly concerned about whether or not they were enjoying their meals. The infant cynic in me now recognized that she didn't really care either way; she just wanted to make sure that her tip wasn't in danger. It was never about me and my meal for her.

"We're fine," Edward all but hissed at her, and startled, she backed away from the table.

"Enjoy your meal," she stammered out, shooting me a quick glance, presumably to see if I needed a hit from the large pepper mill she held in her hand.

I nodded my head at her; this wasn't her fight. "Thank you," I said, attempting a bland smile. "Everything looks delicious."

As she scampered away, Edward moved his hand so that he now held my wrist firmly in his grasp. "I did _not_ set you up. I did _not_. I figured that the least I owed that girl in the Masters project video was a chance to take the big chair, and if I got to choose, that's who I'd choose to get my news from. Just the memory of her was enough for me; it didn't even matter whether you were the same person or not. I get why they couldn't kick Dan to the curb, but don't think for a second that it didn't piss me off to know that the girl in the Masters project wasn't getting everything she deserved...and then some. What I might have wanted from you personally was entirely separate from what I wanted _for_ you professionally."

"What exactly do you want from me personally?" I tried to wrap my head around how half of him wanted to support and reward me for the reporter I was, while the other half of him apparently wanted me to disappoint him in some way.

He released my wrist and slid his hand back toward his side of the table, picking up his fork once more and spearing a piece of steak. "You're a smart girl. Answer your own question this time. I can't imagine you need any more facts from me."

"No. No more riddles from you. Either say it — say what you mean — or we're going to forget the whole thing, because everything between us starts with words."

His fork hit the rim of his plate with a sharp clanging sound, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and meant for my ears alone. "Oh, you're a sucker for the romance, aren't you." His hand promptly disappeared under the table, only to come up for air again around my right knee, the unexpected contact sending seismic shock waves throughout my nervous system and making me jump. "You want to know what I want? Fine. I want it all, Bella. I want everything. And I'm going to be brutally honest with you now, because you seem to need to hear that. I want it all, and I hate that I do, because I don't think it's possible to have it and not lose something big along the way. I want you, and I want to keep on living my life. I'm a chicken cutlet, and you're a can of cream of mushroom soup. We've just got to figure out if we can make dinner out of that."

"Wait — I'm a can of soup?"

"Would you rather be the cutlet? Fine with me. The last time I called you a chicken, though, you gave me grief about it."

I shook my head at him. "You're so, so strange." I admittedly hadn't had a whole lot of experience with tender emotion, but this seemed a bit of a departure from the ordinary, Harlequin-book way of things.

His hand retreated, and he resumed his dinner with a small smile. "Oh, sweetheart. You don't know the half of it."

I thought for a moment, letting him watch me while I did so. I studiously avoided the broader implications of what "it all" meant to him. He clearly wanted something of me, or from me, or with me, and given our history to date, that was already more than enough to think about. I tried to take a rational approach. "So, let me get this straight. You want me, but you don't _want_ to want me? Er, thanks?"

"Oy," he huffed, wiping the corner of his mouth with his napkin before tossing the white linen next to his plate and leaning in toward me. "How can this not make sense to you? I left Oleg, and I lost him. I can count the people I really give a damn about on the fingers of fewer than two hands. Oleg was one of them, and I left him. And I _know_ that one day, something's going to come up, and I'm going to have to leave you, too. It'll be even worse, because I'll do it by choice, and not with a gun to my head.

"And _you_," he waved a hand in my direction. "If you're not diving into shattered houses, you're breaking into mental institutions. It's like you've got some kind of disorder that prevents you from appreciating danger. The rest of the time, you plan until I'm ready to throttle you, but give you any excuse, and you're off, running head-first into whatever trouble you can find. I love that, and I hate that, and it completely terrifies me."

"If I were a man, would it terrify you to the same extent?"

Edward frowned. "Well, probably not," he finally conceded. "But to be fair, if you were a man, I'd have a whole host of other things worth worrying about, and that would at least in part be responsible for distracting me.

"I can't protect you from yourself, and I can't protect you from me. I don't know how _not_ to feel these things for you, and I don't know how to stay." His eyes were asking me questions I couldn't answer. "I'm lost, Bella. About the only thing I'm sure of right now is that I'm done trying to pretend this isn't happening. And I'm not going to let you pretend it's not, either, so if that's part of your plan, you can just, you know, forget about it." He pointed his fork at me for emphasis, looking so mulish that I was torn between wanting to laugh at him and wanting to slobber all over him like a hyperactive house-bound puppy.

We were both silent for some time, trying to sort through what had been said to see if there was any room at all for compromise. Edward was right; as much as I appreciated the time in the hard field, standing so close to tragedy and bearing witness to it was not the side of news I was most drawn toward. If there was leaving to be done, he'd probably be the one doing it, and I'd be the leave-ee. Could I handle that? Did I even want to try? Did I even have a choice in the matter anymore, given what happened to me every time he touched me, or talked to me, or looked at me?

"Okay," I finally said, more because I felt the need to say something than because anything going on here was actually okay.

His eyebrows raised. "Okay, 'yes'? Or okay, 'this is where I tell you that you need to convince me this is a good idea'?"

"Listen, Edward. I'm not a car. You don't get to test-drive me. I have no idea how to date, or flirt, or be coy. I know I'm supposed to pretend that it's a game, and that nothing's really serious until one or the other of us makes some kind of big, formal announcement to that effect, but really? Screw that. There's too much on the line here for both of us. If you're just playing around, if you're just test-driving, I'm going to beg you to keep right on walking, and find another dealer. Because I take you seriously, and I won't be your experiment in the field of interpersonal relations."

That made him laugh really, really hard, which wasn't at all my intention, and I felt like an idiot. How in the hell did most people do this and make it look cool and easy?

"Fair enough," he said, when he was finally done laughing at me. "All right, then. This should be interesting."

The words he used were lighthearted, but the expression on his face was an oddly relieved one. This was in direct conflict with my own reaction, because the prospect of pursuing this —whatever— with Edward was freaking me out to no small degree. I had no idea how to proceed. Every instinct in my body now seemed to anticipate some sort of attack. He was unexpected on all conceivable levels. Unexpected, and unpredictable, and composed of some kind of chemical that made me completely lose my ability to think clearly.

"So, um...how do we start?" I wanted those words back the very moment they'd left my mouth. Could I possibly sound any more ridiculous? _How do we start?_

The Edward chemical suddenly filled the air around our table, making me nervous and excited. He was no longer confessing things to me, and he was apparently no longer confused or unsure about anything at all, because he abandoned his side of the table and joined me instead on mine, sliding his chair around in a quick motion so that his arm was pressed against my arm, the contact warm and solid but the farthest possible thing from reassuring.

"You want to start right now?" he murmured in my ear. "Right here? Are you sure you're ready for that, Bella? Are you sure you're ready for me?"

"Oh my God," I squeaked, not caring that I sounded like the most aroused mouse on the planet.

His hand slid slowly up my arm. "This, I'm sure, is the easy part," he whispered. "This part wasn't ever even a question, for me, at any rate. It would be so, so easy for me to have you right now, Bella. I could take this one finger, and put it right...there...and make you just stop thinking for a while. But that's not how this is going to happen. If you want me, come and get me - come and get me even though you don't know what's going to happen next, and even though you're scared. I've given you my fear and my weakness, and now you need to forget about logic and caution. Because unless you're just as scared as I am, and yet just as willing to jump off a cliff and into the dark, this doesn't have a shot in hell of working for either one of us."

Lips were now against my neck, and gentle fingertips were making an unholy mess of the nerves underneath the tender skin of my upper arm. "Come on. Jump. Jump with me."

"Edward, don't play with me. This isn't nice, and it's not fair."

"I've never been less inclined to play in my life," he answered my jugular. "I'm serious. I need you to be serious, too. Want this as much as I do, and maybe we can make it work."

The power of chemical Edward compelled me to turn and grab his face with both hands, tearing him away from my neck and shoving my tongue into his mouth. It wasn't the first time we'd kissed, but it was the first time I'd kissed him, and it was sloppy, and unschooled, and without any finesse whatsoever, and totally amazing all the same. His fingers reached up to grip my shoulders, and he made a sound that landed somewhere between a laugh and a groan. That kiss decided something between us; it might have decided everything, but it was too soon to tell about that.

"Uh, you folks done here?" The voice of the poor waitress brought me crashing back to reality. We were in the middle of a very nice restaurant, in the middle of a very nice meal, in the middle of the busiest, most crowded city on the planet, and we were two people with faces that might have been easily recognized by almost anyone with the television set. Private displays of affection were a stretch for me; public displays were virtually unheard of, and suddenly none of that mattered, because the prying eyes of all the citizens of the city wouldn't have made me regret what I'd just done. _This_ was what it meant to connect to someone. I'd never understood it before, but oh, I understood it after that kiss.

"Just the check, please," Edward told her, barely moving his mouth away from mine. "And you should make that happen really fast if you're looking for a tip."

Five minutes and an indeterminate handful of cash later, we were in a cab headed somewhere. "Mine," Edward said, and I wasn't sure whether he was referring to his apartment, or to me, or to something else entirely, but honestly, it didn't really matter anymore. We were going somewhere, and I was something, and that was about all I needed to know. I didn't care that it was probably not smart to have sex with my co-anchor. I didn't care that he was leaving. I'd stopped thinking sometime after he moved his chair next to mine in the restaurant.

"I think I'm drunk," I mumbled into his shoulder, and I felt him laugh.

"You had five sips of wine. I counted."

"Not that kind of drunk," I insisted, making him laugh some more. "I don't feel like myself right now."

"I don't know, sweetheart. You feel pretty good to me."

That reminded me of something, and since our conversation seemed to indicate that no topic was forbidden at the moment, I decided to ask. "Why do you call me 'sweetheart'? Is it—I'm not sure, but do you still mean it to be insulting, somehow?"

"You might find this hard to believe, but I never meant it as an insult, really," he answered, his lips against my hair. "Call it my own private little joke with myself. I don't think I can stop now, if that's what you're asking me."

"I don't really like it." It reminded me of how irritating he was when we first met.

"Call me something I don't like in return, and we'll be even."

"NewsFox," I whispered into his ear, almost stupid with the victory.

"Shit. Okay, I'll try to come up with something else."

Then we were on a sidewalk, and then a lobby, and then an elevator, and then a doorway, and finally, alone together in a dark apartment. I was clearly having an out-of-body experience, because none of it felt even remotely real to me.

I grabbed his hand away from the switchplate. "No lights."

"Yes, lights," he objected. "Every light in the place, if I can figure out how to do that right now with you squirming around on me."

"Lights make it real. Lights make me think."

Determined, Edward grabbed both of my wrists with one of his hands and held them firmly behind my back, reaching out with his free hand to flip the light switches and illuminate the entire living room.

"This is real. Think away, Bella. I want to see what I'm getting into. Pun definitely intended."

The wattage overhead shocked me back into my body, and his words brought home the reality that we were about to get really naked with each other. I knew no more about the sex thing than I did when I confessed my woeful incompetency to him right before our first kiss in my office. I just hadn't thought that it was going to be an issue quite this soon. I'd meant to study a little, at least.

He took one look at my face and groaned. "Oh, no, no, no. Not now. _What_?"

"I'm still, um, not really—I mean, I don't know how..."

"Oh, right," he nodded. "You're still under the impression that you can't get an A-plus in Naked Fun 101." He pulled me over to a large, wide gray sectional and settled himself down on it, drawing me down onto his lap with a sigh.

"Listen. I have no idea what kind of schmucks you've been getting naked with, and I don't really want to know, so keep that information to yourself, thanks. This is pretty simple stuff. I'm a sure thing where you're concerned. I live here, so it's not like I'm going to sneak out in the middle of the night. It's not just sex between us, and you know that. Believe me, of all the things we need to figure out , this is definitely not going to be the complicated part. Here—turn around a little," he said, shifting me so that I straddled his thighs, and oh, my God, was that ever nerve-wracking.

"Don't freak out. I'm pretty sure the zipper will contain my situation for the moment," he laugh-winced.

"You know what? This isn't funny to me. At all. And if you're just going to laugh and make me feel—forget it." I tried to wriggle away from him, but he was having none of it, and the position I was in made being huffy look totally impossible.

"Bella. Oh, Bella," he sighed again, threading his arms under mine and pressing my torso up against his. "I'm sorry. You didn't laugh at me when I was nervous about the show, and now I'm the asshole making you feel badly because you're nervous about this. " His brow furrowed for a moment, then cleared. "Okay. Here's what we're going to do. You have a choice to make. Either you investigate me, or I investigate you." And with that, both of his arms dropped to his sides.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It's pretty clear, isn't it? Ask my body any question you like. Gather facts. I won't stop you. Well, I'll stop you if you do anything to my feet, because they're ticklish, but anything else is yours. All of it. Have a go. Do some of that research you love so much."

I looked at him as though he'd completely lost his mind. "I'm not sure I can—that's just crazy. Or creepy. Or something."

"Yay," he grinned like the devil. "If you don't want to start, that means I get to go first." And he put one arm behind me while shifting his ass off the couch, deftly turning me at the same time so that in the space of a moment, I found myself lying down on the couch as he hovered over me, staring down into my eyes. "Oh, look at you. Look at you, on my couch. Have you always had this beautiful long hair?"

I nodded in response, trying desperately not to hyperventilate as his gaze meandered over my face. My hands were balled in tense fists at my sides.

"I like it," he conversationally informed me, taking a lock of it between his fingers. "It's usually so neat, but right now, it's sort of wild, as though it leapt over the wall of adult responsibility and decided to run around in a park for the afternoon. This hair is playing hookie." The index finger of his right hand traced a small indentation on my left temple. "How did you get this scar?"

"Um, my mother's friend Rags had a card table. I got into a fight with it, and the card table won."

"Cute. How old were you?"

"Ten? Eleven? Somewhere around there." I couldn't pin down the age. It had really hurt, and I remembered it because it was the first time I forced myself not to cry.

"Mmmhmmm. You have such small earlobes. Did you ever want to get them pierced?"

On and on he went, spending time on each part of me, asking questions and prompting stories. I had never before felt so _noticed_. His was a gentle scrutiny; he occasionally teased, but there was nothing threatening or unpleasant about it at all, and he casually ignored the parts of me that were directly related to anything sexual. The result of this was that because nothing was specifically intimate, everything became intimate, and everything was important, and by the time I reached that breathless conclusion, I was, in the vernacular, absolutely gagging for him to get to the good bits.

"I need you. Here," I gasped, and finally dragged his hand over my breast, pulling the rest of him down to me with my other hand.

"I'm here," his quiet answer came against my jaw, his fingers closing around the offered flesh with what felt like gratitude. "I'm here, and here, and here. I'll be everywhere. Anywhere you like." And then he was, and I didn't hesitate for another moment to pull aside and cast off anything that got in the way of him being wherever I could get him to go, my hands eager to learn him, too. The long, clean line of his back, and the slight sway where it ended and the rise of his ass began; a small mole on his left shoulder blade, and a tiny nick on his throat from that morning's shave. The light in the room showed me everything, and I admired and touched it all. He was effortlessly gorgeous, and while I might once have been intimidated by that, all of his words and his touches were letting me know that he found me as beautiful as I found him, and so briefly, the playing field was level between us.

His fingers were between my legs, making me ache for more and harder, but when he slowly slid his body down mine, the movement distracted me.

"Where are you—oh, no," was all I could say, seeing self-consciousness and uncertainty winking at me as they hurried over the horizon.

He chuckled against my navel. "Oh, yes. I'm southbound. Accept it," he ordered me. "I plan a thorough investigation."

His tongue and his fingers found all my secrets, and I flipped the bird at self-consciousness and uncertainty, because honestly, there was no room for any thought beyond how amazing this felt. But he was so far away from me, and I couldn't give him anything more than sounds, so I gave him those and plenty of them. When I came, I came shouting and incoherent, muscles all over my body pulling in on themselves and then melting into satisfied slackness.

"Are you having fun yet?" he laughed as he moved back up to join me.

"Get in me," was all I could manage to say, and it was the only important thing in the world.

"Bossy." I grabbed him as he rolled a condom onto himself, pushing his hand away so that I could finish the job because he wasn't going fast enough. "Jesus," he groaned as my fingers wrapped around him and squeezed. "I'll never make it if you keep that up."

"Just—please." I'd gone from bossy to begging in no time flat. Part of me wasn't proud of that, but most of me just wanted him to move faster. Uncharacteristically, he listened to me, and slid himself into me without any debate.

My legs wrapped around him, and I tried to move with him, but his hand clamped down against my hip to still me. "Oh, God," he grunted. "Don't move. Sorry, this isn't going to take long." He held me down and the gentle explorer vanished, replaced by this driven, focused, all-business man, his eyes on a prize he was doing his best to let me share again.

He threw me across the finish line right before he crossed it, long, slow vowels gusting from his mouth into my neck, the hand that held my hip like a vise releasing it to try to cushion the impact his heavy body made on my boneless one.

I forced my rubber arms to obey me and hold him close, wondering briefly and nonsensically if Peter would consider trading Daisy/Derek in for a California King.

"And _that_'swhat all the fuss is about," Edward said when he caught his breath. "Still think this is going to be a problem for us?"

"Well, no," I admitted. "But you did all the work."

He closed his eyes and grinned at me. "We're a team, Bella. I can show you the contracts again, in case you forgot about that. Also, that was about as far from 'work' as you get." Another deep breath later, and he pulled his body out of and away from mine. "Stay. Right. There," he cautioned me with an outstretched arm, hand raised in a "halt" position. "I mean it. That's exactly what I want to see when I get back here."

And newly Naked Fun Bella did just that. I felt completely awkward and exposed, but the logical side of my brain accepted that he'd already seen me as bare as I could ever get, and there was no point in covering anything up now.

Edward returned no more than two minutes later, sinking down next to me on the couch and pulling me back into his arms.

"I thought you said you weren't a grabby person," I needled him, deriving great pleasure from just putting my hands on the arms that were around me.

"Apparently, I'm slightly grabby when it comes to you. Are you okay with that?"

I nodded, even though the word I would have chosen wouldn't have been "okay". I was great with that. Fabulous. Fantastic. Just splendid, thank you. Why, yes.

And yet...I discovered that being a naked woman curled up against a man who didn't appear to want to either bolt from the scene or create circumstances under which I'd be forced to do the same posed a whole new set of tricky possibilities. I had new questions, and they all seemed pretty dangerous or trite.

"I can hear you thinking," Edward murmured behind me. "What now?"

"Exactly," I answered. What now?

One of his arms left me, and I could feel him scratching his head. "Well, I guess you're just going to have to trust me, and I'm going to have to trust you, and we'll figure it out as we go."

"That doesn't seem like much of an answer, really."

His hand pushed gently on my shoulder, indicating that he wanted me to turn, and so I did. "It's the only answer I've got, sweetheart. I'm flying blind, too. But definitely more naked time is called for. I mean, clearly."

We were silent for a while, although the silence wasn't an uncomfortable one. Edward had reached up to the back of the couch and thrown a blanket over us, settling back down with a small "Hmmmmm" and then gradually fading into the regular breath of sleep. The clock on the cable box read 10:47; it was late, and for the first time in my life, I had the chance to leave before I was left. I decided, on balance, that it wasn't a good idea to stay the night, and so I shifted out from under his arm and shimmied off of the couch to grab my clothes and hit the bathroom before making my way back to my apartment.

Fully dressed, I allowed myself to look at him while he slept. I'd learned so much about him that night, but there were still so many things I didn't know. I only hoped that we didn't screw this up before I had the chance to find those things out.

"I'm not wild about you leaving right now," he said quietly, scaring the crap out of me nonetheless and making me jump. "I'd rather you stayed."

"I'd rather you stayed, too," I replied. "But I'm going to go home for now."

"Don't spend the night thinking. And don't make this weird, because it's not, and I won't let you." He propped his head up with his hand. "Finally, if you think you're getting out of here without giving me a kiss goodnight, you are seriously delusional."

I leaned down to press my lips to his, and his hand came up to rest against my jaw. "See you in the morning," I mumbled. "Get some sleep." And then I left him on the couch to go back home and try to accept that my life had just gotten loads more complicated than it had ever been before.

If I'd half-expected Edward to turn what happened between us into information for public consumption in the same way he'd broadcasted the news of our first kisses, I was sorely mistaken. Oh, there was a definite bounce in his step, but when Kathy asked him if it was because he'd spent the night trading tweets with culloony, he just grinned at her and asked her if she was ever going to cop to the fact that it was really her screen name. Then he strolled into my office and examined my expression.

"Making this weird?" he asked me, and I shook my head. "Excellent. Pucker up, then." His lips landed on mine with a smile attached to them. "Hmmm," he said when he'd backed away from me, and ran his tongue along his lips. "No, I taste no hint of regret, either. There's a slight tang of overthink, but I'm hoping that'll burn off. Let's go walk among the unwashed in the bullpen and see what they've got going on today. Paul was screaming about something he wanted to bring up in the morning meeting."

And so the day went. I felt as though there was a mountain of unfinished business between us, but he seemed perfectly content to focus on the job, although he occasionally slipped into my office to either kiss me or subject me to a brief but completely devastating flashback to the previous nights' episode on his couch. He'd just sort of wander over to me without any warning and offer an observation like "I love the way your skin tastes", then wander away again, leaving me to the task of reassembling my shattered concentration.

Andrew called me right as I was walking into the afternoon rundown meeting to let me know that he'd scrounged up a willing physics professor for us, and I immediately called the guy to set up a meeting. David Banner had been with Columbia since the late 1990s. From the sound of him on the phone, he was a bona fide science geek, complete with snorting laugh and awkward social tendencies, but he was clearly excited about the fact that someone wanted to talk science with him and eager to share what he knew about CERN. I waved Edward over to me and let him know that there was a fish on the line, momentarily muting my phone to ask if he wanted to join us for drinks after the show to get the download on all things ALICE.

"Wait — it's Thursday, right? I'm on for dinner with my father tonight," he frowned. "Unless you want to meet the folks? Jesus, I just sprained something in my head."

I shook my own head so hard that he laughed at me, then I unmuted my phone to let Banner know we were on for Friday evening if he was available. The prospect of spending an evening talking about theoretical physics was apparently a really attractive one, because he immediately agreed, and we set up a get-together at eight the following night.

Tanya eyed us suspiciously throughout the afternoon rundown, practically pinning Edward to a wall in the conference room the minute the meeting adjourned. She asked him a quick question in Russian, and he raised his eyebrows and tilted his head at her in reply.

"Allilúja! Molodéts!" she shouted, slapping him several times on the shoulder. "Why you not call me to tell me?"

The look on his face was priceless. "Tanya, we need to talk about boundaries. And when I say that we need to talk about them, what I really mean is that you need to develop some."

Undeterred, she cruised over to me and grabbed me by the shoulders to plant a kiss on each of my cheeks. "You are so, so crazy," she shook her head at me. "Is like we're relatives."

"Can you, um, just not? I'm already completely spastic," I begged her. Things were being taken for granted, and this was all moving much too quickly for me.

"Pssh."

"Care to tell me what you people are not-exactly-whispering about?" Emmett loomed over Tanya's shoulder, making me realize that this whole exchange wasn't exactly a subtle one.

"Not really," I answered, still thoroughly unnerved by the fact that my private life was colliding so brazenly with my public one. Emmett considered me for a moment before shrugging.

"I'll get it out of the Russian," he said. "I have donuts." And with that cryptic response, he yanked on Tanya's arm and the two of them disappeared, leaving Edward and me standing in the doorway. He rolled his head around in a sarcastic little circle, but before the revolution was completed, Peter interrupted us.

"You two are sitting down with PR," he grumbled. "This needs a spin. I want their input."

It took Edward all of three seconds to abandon sarcasm and don a bit of insulted incredulity. "You know, Peter, I'm pretty sure it's nobody's business whether Bella and I choose to know each other without our clothes on. We'll do the show, and we'll do it well, and that should be enough for anyone at this network."

"You two had sex?" Tyler's voice was sadly a penetrating one, and anyone in the room who hadn't already figured out what was going on by that point was now firmly in the loop on things.

"I need to be somewhere else, before I hit somebody," I squeezed my eyes shut and stepped forward, promptly whacking the side of my head into the doorway. "God dammit!"

"Okay, we'll meet with PR," Edward said to Peter as he gently massaged my latest injury. "But only because if we don't form a plan, I'm pretty sure Bella's going to end up in a hospital."

He tried to grab my arm to lead me out of the conference room, but I was so discombobulated and out of sorts that I insisted on some quiet time in the sanctuary of my own office, where I holed up for the remainder of the time before we had to go down to the studio.

Things sort of calmed down after that, and I suspected this was because either Edward or Peter made it clear to all and sundry that the topic was off-limits in my presence. By Friday, evidence of the general state of things between Edward and myself was pretty obvious, and I found myself alternately fielding speculative glances from the boys and (gratifyingly) envious glances from most of the women, except for Kathy, who seemed slightly disappointed in me.

My solitary office time was divided between show stories and research on CERN, so that by the time we sat down in a cushy banquette at a quiet bar on Friday evening, I'd at least absorbed a bare minimum of the mechanics and purpose of the program in Geneva.

"Did you pack a bag?" Edward asked me after we'd ordered drinks and were just waiting for Banner to arrive.

"For what?" It suddenly dawned on me that he probably wasn't talking about taking an impromptu flight to Geneva, and my face heated up. "Oh." I could have kicked myself for being so dense, but in my defense, this was uncharted territory for me.

"Never mind," he laughed. "I have a spare toothbrush, and we'll just make up the rest on the fly." And then he lowered his mouth to my ear. "Let's make it quick with Bill Nye, okay? The right side of the bed is waiting for you."

On a whim, and slightly power-mad, I decided to test my ability to persuade him. "What if I really, really want the left side?" And because I had absolutely no skill in the fine art of flirtation, my attempt to bat my eyelashes at him was met with a snort of derision.

"I don't think it'll matter too much either way, as I plan on moving us around quite a bit."

This interesting topic of discussion was interrupted by the arrival on the scene of Professor Banner, his appearance neatly in-line with his voice: standard-issue brown corduroy jacket with patches at the elbows, wrinkled chino slacks, blue shirt paired with hideous tie, brown loafers, glasses, and a wiry, graying mustache to match his wiry, graying hair.

"Ms. Swan?" he said tentatively, immediately throwing me back to my college years, because the formal use of my last name was clearly not a social nicety for him, but rather the way he automatically addressed anyone under the age of fifty.

"Professor Banner," I answered, standing and shaking his hand. "This is Edward Cullen. Thanks so much for agreeing to waste a Friday evening with us."

He made a noise at the back of his throat which, had it been translated into actual English, would have meant something like "No, not at all", and moved to take a seat next to me. I wasn't at all sure what to expect when it came to his drink order, and was therefore more than a little surprised when he asked the cocktail waitress for an Irish Car Bomb. Edward just shrugged, and I held on to the hope that Banner would be sober enough not to break down into Hubbard gibberish before the night was through.

"So, CERN," I opened, the moment his carbomb landed in front of him. "I know that it's a multi-national cooperative effort to test theories about particle physics, and that they have at least four separate programs they're planning on running through the Hadron collider. Can you tell me a little bit about what they're hoping to find out?"

He shook his head at me sadly. "Oh, it's so much more than that, Ms. Swan. Really, so much more than that." I tried to look suitably chastised, but it was difficult to keep a hold on my patience, because what I needed wasn't a lecture on the importance of scientific discovery. I needed information on how to keep my friend safe.

"Explain, please."

He cracked his mental knuckles in joyful anticipation. "I don't know if I can do justice to the scope of what CERN accomplishes, but I'll do my best. Fully half of the particle physicists on the planet today work for CERN, and as if that wasn't already enough, the programs at the Institute have been responsible for enormous advancements on every scientific front you can think of. I know Al Gore likes to take credit for inventing the internet, but really, that was a CERN project as well, and Tim Berners-Lee should really be losing elections for it." He snickered as he spoke, and Edward sat there mystified, lacking any true appreciation for what was a pretty funny geek joke.

After he got a grip on his giggles, the professor continued. "Ah, anyway. The large Hadron collider, specifically, is science's greatest hope of answering some of the biggest questions mankind has ever asked itself. We're talking about everything from how the universe was formed, to what it's made out of, to how it works, and where it's ultimately headed. I mean, big questions. The biggest."

"Okay, so, what does it do?" Edward's simple question earned him a pitying look from the professor.

"I can see that I'm going to have to really keep this simple," he frowned, and I almost laughed out loud at the insulted look on Edward's face. "Okay, here: you know that you and everything around you is made up of something called 'atoms', right?"

"Hooo," I couldn't help breathing, because that tone wasn't likely to keep Edward in his seat for very long.

"Yeah. Atoms," Edward nodded, taking a moment to kick me under the table, a habit I was really not going to appreciate any time in the near future. "Everything has atoms. Got it. And I might be wrong about this, but atoms have different parts, right?"

Banner nodded, clearly pleased that Edward was quick on the uptake, for an idiot. "Exactly. Right. So the collider is basically running experiments on those different parts of atoms to see if they can find out new information about them. They smash those parts into one another at high speeds, then study the reactions from those collisions. What they hope to discover is a whole bunch of different things."

"Like...?"

"Well, like what anti-matter looks like, for a start," the professor responded. "I mean, it's basic Newtonian physics, isn't it?"

Edward tilted his head. "I don't know. Is it? Let's pretend that I've forgotten lots of stuff about Newtonian physics, for the sake of argument."

If I hadn't been so anxious to get answers for Alice, this might have qualified as the most fun I'd ever had over drinks, but we were here for a reason, and so I sent a kick Edward's way to shut him up and let the professor just get on with it.

"To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction," the professor recited. "Or, in the case of matter, for every 'thing', there is an anti-'thing'. So that's anti-matter. We can't see it, but the laws of physics tell us it must exist. And the LHCb is going to help us find it."

"So, that's the point of the whole thing? To find anti-matter?" I found that a little disappointing.

Banner snorted. "Hardly. It's just one of the questions we need answered."

"Can you tell us more about the specific programs at CERN? Like, say, ALICE?" I needed to put some fire under him, or we'd be here all night talking about things that didn't matter to me.

"Ah. ALICE is studying lead ion collisions. They're looking for several different things, there. The collisions are super-heated by a factor of a hundred times the heat of our sun to find out what happens to matter at those temperatures. They're also studying the quarks inside protons and neutrons, to see if those can be freed in the collision."

"And, um, is there a potential down-side to these experiments?"

He looked at me as though I'd suddenly grown an extra head. "There's never a down-side to scientific discovery, Ms. Swan."

"Okay, but...could something theoretically go wrong with the experiments?"

And now he eyed me with suspicion, as though I'd suddenly become an enemy of academic advancement. "Go wrong? Not likely. The finest minds alive today are working on these experiments. Of course, there are some crackpot theories out there, but they're just theories, and the experiments are tightly-controlled in a closed and guarded environment. They're studying small-scale reactions to prove a larger point."

Edward took one for the team. "What crackpot theories? I mean, just for laughs."

Banner rolled his eyes. "Ugh, there are probably hundreds of them. One of the popular ones concerning ALICE is the potential for the development of strangelets."

"And those are...?"

"Well, strange quarks, obviously. The theory is that there are three different kinds of quarks in a strangelet: up, down, and strange. Some of the nutters out there posit that trying to free quarks from protons might cause a specific nucleic chain-reaction in which all atoms on earth would convert to strange matter."

"And that would be a bad thing, right?" Edward nodded. "I'm just guessing. It sounds bad. Funny, but probably bad, too."

Banner wasn't laughing, though. "It would never happen. But for the sake of argument, if it _were_ to happen, then yes, it would be 'bad', to use your definition."

"How bad, exactly?" I leaned in, because talk about quarks and strange matter meant nothing at all to me, but "bad" sounded promising.

"The end of everything," Banner said, punctuating his statement by dropping the shot of Jameson into his Guinness stout and swallowing a mouthful of carbomb.

# # #

A/N - Hey! So, yeah, that was a bunch of stuff. Thank you to everyone who contributed to Team LittleCiaoOnTime during this last round of FGB. I hope you enjoyed your EPOV of what happened after Bella fell asleep in Edward's arms that night in Kansas half as much as I enjoyed writing it for you, and I hope you're now totally sucked into "Living Backwards", "Brown Study", and "Boy on the Side", if you weren't already. If you missed out, please know that it's not too late to donate to the team and get in on the action - hit up Caro on Twitter (caro2lalala), or find the link for the donation page on my profile here at ff! Carolalala organized the whole thing. She's my hero.

Ciaobella27, littlesecret84, and spanglemaker9 pre-read this big ball of crazy. I think I broke littlesecret84's eye in the process, but she won't admit it. How fabulous are they? So, so fabulous. As are all of you who stay with this story, who read it and review it and recommend it. I don't have a big enough font to express my appreciation of you all.

Tanya is saying "Hallelujah! Attaboy!" when she congratulates Edward.

The chapter title refers to the five "W"s of journalism, and are questions every reporter needs to ask in order to get a story. Some people add "how" to that list. I ignore those people, because "how" doesn't start with a "w", and as a result, it freaks with my inner feng shui.


	16. EPOV Outtake: And Now I Understand

A/N - Hi there. Step outside the "Breaking News" narrative for a moment with me, will you? This is the EPOV outtake I wrote for the latest round of FGB. The winners of the outtake decided that they wanted to see what happened from his perspective after Bella fell asleep that first night in Kansas in Chapter 11, and so that's what I gave them. You are free to skip right over this if you don't want to be on the other side of the mirror, as it contains no information that you won't get elsewhere. This might very well be the only EPOV you see in this story, and I hope you enjoy it!

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And Now I Understand

I murmur things into her hair. Things like "Shh, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay", and "Don't cry, I've got you". The words should feel strange in my mouth, but they just spill out as though they've always been there, invisible wisps of comfort. Wisdom teeth. I know it's not really okay. I know I don't really have her. I have no idea at all what I'm doing. I only know that in this moment, her bravado has fled, and she needs arms around her, and I'll be damned if those arms are going to belong to anyone but me. Letting tragedy pass through you the way that we do, allowing yourself to be the conduit for it, is a brutal thing.

And now I understand. I understand why my father used to dance my mother around the living room to scratchy Billie Holiday vinyl. "And if I ever lost you, how much would I cry", and "I tell my friends that I don't care, I shrug my shoulders at the whole affair", and "I've been around the world in a plane, settled revolutions in Spain". I understand it all, and this knowledge leaves me completely "fied". I'm horrified, and terrified, and mystified. I'm glorified. I'm electrified. This is simultaneously everything I feared and everything I hoped, and I don't know where to look or what the hell to do about it, but I have to sit and hold her now, because she needs me, and this. I have to give her what I wouldn't take from anyone. I have to give her what I've never given before.

"Why you don't let anybody need you, Edward?" Tanya asked me once, after we'd returned to the house in St. Petersburg and Oleg was snoring on that old rust-colored couch he loved so much. "Let somebody need you."

But I see what being needed really means. All the armor I have — everything that protects me from getting too close and losing my shit when I'm forced to look at terrible things — I have to hand that in if I let someone need me. I can't have both. If I let someone need me, then every bloated corpse on the beach at Khao Lak, every dusty, empty face I pass on the roadside in Kabul, every cry, every scream, every anguished moan — they all become the person who needs me. The person I need. And every decision from that point on is going to be made in compromise. My mother has my father; it would destroy her to lose me, but he would hold her, and need her, and she'd make it through. If nobody needs me, then it can just be me, and the story, and nothing else to muddy the water.

I've let women need me for a night. Sometimes, I've let them need me for a few nights. It's understood that they're only allowed to need the parts of me that I'm willing to share, and that's never been a problem, because I've never let it become a problem. Their smiles, or their lips, or their tits, they rent space in my life, or in my bed, for a few hours, and then I go, and nobody gets hurt. But this girl. Oh, this girl is going to want the whole thing, and the worst of it is that I'm going to want to give it to her.

Asleep now, she shifts against me, her arm curled underneath her between her head and my heart. Her head, and my heart: it's become the shortest distance between two points. It's also the longest mile in the world.

"I get it, God," I mumble into the darkness. She's the payment for my arrogance, and it's a whopper of a reckoning at that. "Hah, hah." Stupid bastard wins again.

My shirt is damp with her tears; I can feel the moisture making it stick to my skin, like some kind of emotional glue that is now holding her sorrow to me. My feet say "run"; my heart says "help"; my head says "try"; and my arms say "shut the hell up. She feels so good here, and we're not moving." I'm not even going to bother to poll my dick, because he's generally a "go along to get along" kind of participant, and honestly, this is about so much more than the fact that she fits so neatly where she currently rests. The physical reaction was a given. I've never experienced this level of emotional conflict before, and part of me wants to curse her out for it, for making me just want things.

Bella sighs. It's a deep, shuddering sigh, the kind that walks down steps of sadness and offers no relief. It breaks me. In it, I can hear how difficult the day has been for her. I can hear her say goodbye to Bree in that sigh. I don't often do right by Bella, and I know that, but at least I can point to this one instance and know that I made it easier for her, and gave her something worthwhile. Talking about death in generalities from behind a news desk is one thing; holding its hand and watching it happen is something else entirely. I try not to remember the death I've seen, but Bella's initiation into the sad club reminds me of my own, of the mother and the baby, half-covered in soft sand. The heat; mouths open, eyes closed; the flies. The stench — it never leaves your nose once it's gotten in there, ever. I can still smell it, the sense memory so potent that it reaches across years in an instant. It would be here, too, but people in green fatigues are carefully zipping it into black plastic and taking it away. How tidy. In other places around the world, they use dump trucks and shovels, or nothing at all, and just let time and starving animals do the job for them. Meat is meat, and a dog's gotta eat, as the saying goes. We're so polite about it here, because we have that luxury.

Jesus Christ, I'm tired. I'm tired of fighting everything. I'm tired of knowing things, and I'm just as tired of not knowing what the hell to do about her. I had a plan, goddamn it: I was coming back here to make sure that she was an optical illusion, the trick of a faulty and idealistic memory. I was just going to make sure, and then I'd be free to fuck right off and get back to my life. I was so, so sure. All that time, I was so sure I was right, because really, what were the odds that she'd be any different from anyone else?

I just had to find out, right? I just had to. Stupid ass. Curiosity killed the Cullen.

For the millionth time, I wish Oleg was here, even though he'd be laughing his head off. It's bad enough that I have Tanya giving me grief. She keeps calling Bella my "pinch nerve", because she knows that I'm surprised and uncomfortable. She's worse than a mother— if I don't figure out what the hell I'm doing soon, I have every confidence that she'll take it upon herself to get me drunk and drop me in Bella's bed just to get it over with. She'd pose us like claymation figures, and then snicker while she created a little stop-action animation film.

As though she'd have to force me. As though I'm not ready and more than eager enough to be there. As though this woman doesn't already completely captivate me on every level. Tanya doesn't get that I'm not jumping all over Bella because I don't want to; I'm not jumping on Bella because I don't know if doing so will break her heart, or mine, or both. I only know that once I'm there, everything changes for both of us. This is me, trying hard not to be selfish. It's a new look for me, which is why I'm sure Tanya doesn't understand what's going on.

I would take Bella, and I would drain her dry. It scares the hell out of me, because once I start asking, once I start taking, I'm not sure I'll be able to stop. I'll take it all, and then something will happen somewhere in the world, and I'll have to leave her to be there. I won't be able to promise that I'll be safe or careful.

Bella knows the news. She understands the chase. I see in her eyes what lives in mine, that need to get to the bottom of things and sort it all out. If the situation is reversed, how would I survive it? How could I watch her walk away and into the dangerous unknown? She's lucky I didn't strangle her today when she went into that house to get those kids. She's oh-so-very-fortunate that I didn't tie that cable around her body and lower her back down to the ground. Out of harm's way. Even now, so early on, the fact that she has so little regard for her own safety makes me crazy. I'm getting between her and her stories. I'd come out swinging if someone tried that, so I admire her forbearance.

How can I stay and watch myself hamstring the very thing about her that makes me feel the things I do for her? How can I stay and let her do the same thing to me?

But maybe...maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she'd be happy to let me go out there. Maybe she'd be able to live with the uncertainty, and maybe I'd be able to give her the same freedom. Maybe, together, we'd be able to figure out a way to make a situation like that work. I'm a coward for not asking her if she'd like to try that. I'm a coward for not trying it myself.

I don't let anyone call me a coward — not even me.

Oleg would have understood this. He could have told me what to do, because he managed to do it and not let the fear or the uncertainty drown him. What kind of circus trick do I need to pull off in order to hold on and let go at the same time? I only know how to let go. I only know how to be freed. I have no idea how to hold on, and be held onto. Wherever he is now, I'm betting he's had a hand in this situation, because it would so be like him to mess with my head and get me back for all the times I laughed when he flew away home like a lovesick bird.

There's a pattern, and it's easy to spot. If one of the men in the studio building opens a conversation with me by uttering any of these: "Bella would kill me/kick my ass/string me up by my balls for saying this, but —", I know what's coming. She has no idea. No clue. They're so insanely proud and protective of her that I think any one of them would gladly get a little bloody if he thought someone wasn't showing her the kind of respect they all feel she's earned. Emmett's the only one who never actually opened his mouth up on the subject. He had the whole conversation with me using only his eyebrows, like two hairy little semaphore flags. They're right, too, because she'd go crazy if she thought they were trying to protect her like that. This woman is too brave to let anyone else do her fighting for her.

The reflection makes me laugh a little, shaking Bella where she lies on my chest and making her turn her head in toward me. The problem isn't me not respecting her; the problem is me respecting her a little too much, at this point. The girl in that Masters project report has spent the last five years turning into one hell of a reporter. And I kind of want to tell every man in the place to step off, because if she needs to be protected, I'll be the one doing the protecting from here on out. Let her argue with me about it, and I'll kiss the objections right out of her head with pleasure. I'll make her forget them all.

Tanya tiptoes onto the bus and creeps softly down the aisle toward where we sit in the rear. She's about as unkempt as I've ever seen her, which means that she's still more kempt than I am on my best day.

"You look confused," her voice is a whisper. "The woman is in your arms. You forget how to do this now? So disappointing," she tsks with a warm smile. She knows me so well. I can see her taking silent inventory of my expression, noting the new revelations she finds there.

I shake my head at her, and because I can no longer say these things to Oleg, I have to say them to her. "You know it's not that simple. I could really hurt her. I know it hurt you when he left, even if you never said so. I'll leave too, and what if I don't come back? How can I do to her what Oleg did to you?"

Tanya's tired eyes flash. "Stupid boy. You don't think I go through all this again for ten more minutes with him? You don't know nothing. No more thinking — just do. Is like left shoe arguing with right shoe now. She is right shoe for you. Start walking."

"You know, one day, years from now, you might accidentally just say what you mean without turning it into a simile, and I'll die from shock."

This earns me a hiss from her. "You waste too much time. Nobody knows what will happen. You have chance to be with her now. If I had chance to be with my Oleg, believe me, Edward, I'm not gonna be here talking to you."

Although our voices are nothing more than hushed whispers, the increased speed at which I'm breathing causes Bella to stir against my chest once more. My arms instinctively tighten around her, and I gently slide my hand up and down the length of her exposed arm in a gesture I can only describe to myself as somehow innately and unconsciously comforting. Comfort meant primarily for her, although I realize that it brings me comfort as well.

Tanya is silent until she sees that Bella's settled against me, and then she fixes her sad eyes on mine. "Be happy, malchik moy. Please. For me. Bad things happen, but when you can be happy, you should always choose that."

I let go of Bella with one hand to reach out for Tanya, and as our hands touch, I know she's already forgiven me for my annoying and uncharacteristic moment of hesitation. We've all lived our lives for so long now trusting instinct and intuition. These things rarely fail us, and when we see others camped out with maps and books, we laugh at them. Haven't I teased Bella for thinking too much? Great — now I'm a hypocrite, even if she'll never know it.

"Stupid boy," Tanya says again, this time fondly, with a smile on her face. "You have two hours. If you don't want to eat, get some sleep. I gonna come wake you at eleven o'clock."

She quietly makes her way back down the aisle to the front of the bus, disappearing from my view as she finds the stairs and slips out into the night. I tuck my chin down to see what Bella's up to, but I only find slightly-tangled brown hair and the tip of her nose, the breath from which is a gentle accordion of warm/cool/warm against my sternum. This place we're in is no place to start a romance: everywhere we look, people are grieving losses big and small, live and material. No matter what Tanya says about not wasting time, I'm not doing anything until we get back to New York, because the memory of what's happened here is never going to be a happy one no matter how many kisses I cover it with. I need to play this carefully, and I need to play this cool.

Bella told me to stop trying to stay away from her, and I will. Earlier, I polled my feet, and my heart, and my head, but I left my gut out of the equation, which was unheard of, and not a mistake I plan on making again. I know what my gut says. My gut says this woman is mine.

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A/N - There now. Hopefully, this will put to rest some of the questions you have about Edward, even though he's obviously still got a few things to figure out. Littlesecret84 and Ciaobella27 are my teammates, and my soulmates. Carolalala made it possible for us to look organized and professional, so she deserves a medal and a vacation and some remuneration. Thank you so, so much to all who donated money to such a worthy cause, and for your interest in and support for this story! A new chapter from the actual narrative is in the works, and I hope to post in the next week or so.


	17. Exit Ramps

Stephenie Meyer owns everything Twilight, and she's got the bank account to prove it.

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Exit Ramps

"Hello there."

What I discovered about waking up next to Edward was that he apparently never actually slept, but rather hovered in a kind of suspended animation until his attention was drawn. He watched with amused interest while I jimmied my stubborn left eyelid up with a forefinger and blinked at the unacceptably early Saturday morning sunshine which had joined us in his bedroom.

"Hey." It was one syllable, and without a caffeine crutch, that was about all I could manage to give him.

He nudged my jaw with his nose and wrapped his arm around me to pull me closer to him. "You're really not combat-ready before you've had some coffee, are you? Never mind. I like this. It's a nice change of pace, you not being ready to rumble."

"Grabby," I said, working my way up to two syllables as I took in how very, very nice it was to find consciousness in his embrace. I'd had to give up on being awkward about my nudity, because he flatly refused to let me pay attention to anything other than the rather obvious benefits of the situation. He was clever, and persistent, and distracting, and the oddest thing was that his no-nonsense approach kind of made it easier to demystify sex, allowing me to focus instead on viewing this as something I could _learn_ to be good at. How he guessed that turning this from something emotional to something skill-based would work for me, I had no idea, but I was both grateful and a little disturbed that he already knew something so important about the way I was wired.

"Yes. Yes, I'm grabby. I stand corrected on that issue." He stretched, and his leg found mine under the covers. "Stop being so grabbable, and I'll stop being so grabby."

"I'm not, though," I grumbled, up to three syllables now, and still lacking a filter.

His arm tightened slightly. "Ahh, there you are. Caffeine or no caffeine, ready to fight about something. You know, I think I might have to abandon the clinical tack for a minute, because apparently, you either haven't been paying attention, or you're fishing around for more of my pretty words. You are definitely grabbable. You've clearly been using unreliable sources for information on this subject, so I'm here to set you straight." His lips ran a thrilling little course from my chin to my earlobe. "That's for attribution. I'm on the record."

And sadly, the only verbal response I wanted to make to this flattering assessment was: _not grabbable enough to make you stay_. I couldn't bring myself to say it, and I didn't want to think it, so instead, I let him kiss me while I fired up my brain and considered what we'd learned from Professor Banner the previous evening. I needed to be rational, and there was nothing rational at all about what was happening in this bed.

"Would CERN really leave itself vulnerable to a potential disaster like strangelets? It seems incredibly irresponsible given the sheer number of physicists involved. They must have accounted for a possibility like that if it was a real threat."

"I'm making with the romance, over here," Edward complained into my neck. "You know, saying nice things, and kissing you. Play along."

"I'm thinking," I countered, and felt him slump in exaggerated defeat.

"Yeah, you thinking is a bit of a mood-killer, frankly. Fine. Strangelets. That's not the only potential threat, though, right? I mean, it's just one of the more popular theories. What we _do_ know is that something could go wrong when they fire up that particle accelerator. We just don't know what. Coffee." And with that non sequitur, he shifted himself away from me and vacated the bed, not bothering to cover himself in any way as he absentmindedly scratched his perfect left buttock and wandered over to the door.

He turned as he reached the threshold. "You coming with, or are you planning to flounder around in aimless speculation for a little while longer? We have an agenda today, in that I understand we need to break Alice out of Greymore."

"Aren't you going to, uh, put on some pants, or something?" The sight of him just...out there, like that, was unimaginably distracting, particularly given the fact that he was at half-staff. And he was beautiful.

Edward tilted his head and furrowed his brow. "Well, I'll probably toss something on before we head out to Greymore, because wandering around in public like this might get me more intimately acquainted with the inner workings of that facility than I really want to be." His eyes took in my expression, which I was pretty sure was an unattractive blend of lust and uncertainty surrounded by tangled hair. "Bella? I'll bullshit all day long out there in the big world, but here? With you? I'm trying not to hide anything. I thought I'd made that clear. I saved all my honesty for you." And then his lips curled up into a smirk. "My honesty, and my nuditity."

The words were so simple, but what they did to me was incredibly complicated, and I suddenly wanted to cry in the most embarrassingly feminine way. Again. Instead, I let myself jump out of bed and onto him.

"Ooof," he huffed, as I threw myself against him. "Jesus Christ. I need to remember that my pretty words sometimes have a delayed-fuse action."

"It's not the pretty things you said," I argued against his chest. Because the pretty words were nice, but the naked honesty? That was beyond hot. "Nuditity isn't a word, though."

"I said it. You understood it. This is how language works. It's definitely a word. Quod erat demonstrandum."

"You don't get to quote Euclid and just make up words like that," I persisted, tempering my objection by running my mouth across his left bicep, which was warm and flexed against my lips.

"Ah, yes, actually, I do. That's how language happens. People make up words, and other people agree on the meaning by using the word in context. It's viral, and — shit —" he suddenly hoisted me up against him so that my legs were dangling in the air, and I felt compelled to wrap them around his waist. "Better. Your knee in my balls is not the way I want to lose an argument, or a ball. How are you so heavy? This desk job is destroying my muscle tone."

"Your honesty doesn't have much of a grayscale, does it," I laughed, because despite what he'd said, it was clear that I was in no immediate danger of being dropped due to any physical weakness on his part, and I chose not to let the comment make me feel insecure.

He walked forward, away from the door and toward the bed, splaying his hands underneath my ass to support my weight and pulling it closer to where he now flew at full-mast thanks to the friction we'd created. "Here's some more honesty for you," he murmured low into my ear, abandoning the playful tone of a moment ago and suddenly dead serious. "Coffee's going to have to wait."

Adrenaline supplied what caffeine hadn't yet, my heart pumping anxiously, but for a change, not from fear or dread of this. For a change, it was beating in exhilaration. I understood now, finally, that I was allowed to feel something sloppy, and to experiment, and to share. I couldn't make him stay, but I could have this, and half a loaf was more than the world had ever shown me before. I was momentarily without caution.

"Your mouth," I started to say, breathing too hard and too distracted by the feel of him on me to actually finish the thought beyond simply adding, "It's so good."

"Good isn't good enough for me," his words kissed my skin as he pushed me against the rumpled bed sheets and slid himself down my body. "Get back to me when it's the best."

I squirmed around on the bed, and he held me down. "Oh," I kept repeating, back to one syllable, but not because my brain wasn't yearning to deliver other words. Words like "I love this", and "thank you", and "don't stop", and "I'll be so sad when this is gone". And his hands made me want to hold them and kiss them, but they were busy doing other things to me. If ALICE meant the end of the world, at least I knew this existed. It wasn't enough. I wouldn't get to know this for long enough. Even if what lurked underground in Geneva didn't destroy us all, this still wouldn't be mine forever. I wanted to be grateful that I'd been here at all, that someone I wanted had also once wanted me, before he left.

"Stop thinking." Edward's voice was angry, and he sounded ferocious as his grip on me tightened a bit in frustration. "God dammit, Bella. Just stop thinking. I swear to Christ, I'm not letting you breathe — I'm not letting you eat, or drink, or leave this bed until you just _stop thinking_." His face was suddenly in front of mine, eyes just a hair beyond too close. "Be here with me," he said, quiet and slightly desperate. "Just be here with me now. Don't go anywhere in your head. Please."

This wasn't clinical anymore.

"Stop," I repeated his word, the effort among the most extraordinarily difficult ones I'd ever had to make. Gasping for breath and fighting every impulse in my body, I managed to push him away from me and sit up, and he released me immediately.

"You can't just ask me to pretend that your leaving isn't something I should think about. You can't, because I do, and I will, and that's me. I'm here with you, and there's no place else I'd rather be, but you can't say the same, can you. I might be scared to death, but I'm still here. I'll be here, Edward, but you won't. Don't ask me for something you're not willing to give in return. Don't you dare be that gutless." My voice was shaking, full of his current proximity and future absence, and the effect that both of those had on me.

We looked at each other for a beat, breathing hard, and then Edward unleashed a frustrated growl. "Argh! Why can't they figure out how to clone humans, already? Haven't they had enough practice on the sheep, and the cows, and the dogs?"

That wasn't quite what I expected him to come out with. I wasn't not sure what I was waiting for, but that hadn't even entered my mind as a possibility, and it surprised a quivering laugh out of me in the middle of this heated moment. He leaned across the space that divided us and put his forehead against mine.

"Oh, sweetheart," he breathed, groaning slightly. "For the record, I did warn you that I'd probably fuck this up. See? Honesty and nuditity. That's what I've got, so that's what I'm giving."

"That's still not a word," I exhaled, feeling some of the tension leave my body. "This is hopeless."

That brought his head back up, and his eyes found mine. "Don't say that. It's complicated, yes, but it's not hopeless. I reject that conclusion." He grabbed my hands with both of his. "Come here. Can you just—please—just maybe not _stop_ thinking, but think a little...less?"

I sighed. "I'll think a little less if you leave a little less. How's that?"

It was a smartass, knee-jerk comment, but something about it clearly struck a chord for him, because his eyebrows rose and his lips pulled together. "Interesting. We need to toss that idea around a bit more. But later. Will you do something for me, right now?"

He looked so...open, and my stupid heart dissolved in the face of that. This man, so unused to asking anyone for anything, so accustomed to just having the seas part wherever he went, was quite literally on his knees in front of me. More determined people than I would ever be couldn't have withstood the picture he made, and I knew that this wasn't Edward working an angle. He really wasn't kidding around; this was him being real.

I nodded, not even bothering to qualify the action with a caveat of any kind. If he needed something, and it was within my power to give it to him, I would do it. I would give this expression on his face whatever it wanted, and not even care if that made me a sucker of the highest order, because my road to hell was clearly paved with Edward's smile.

His hands released mine, and began to travel along my forearms, palm against skin up to my shoulders, where they came to rest gently against the sides of my neck. "I want to tell you something that's the plain truth, and I need you to believe it. I need you to treat it like the gospel it is, and not to doubt it. Can you? Can you do that for me, Bella?"

"Tell me."

He exhaled loudly, and let the breath stutter across his lips in a bit of a raspberry as he shook his head. "The truth is that I don't want to leave _you_. Really. I wouldn't be this interested in complicating my previously-uncomplicated life if that wasn't the case, and I might be a lot of things, but I'm not that prick who enjoys causing anyone pain. I need you to know that it's not about me running away from you—at least, it's not about that any more. It's about me running toward the story. I know you understand that part, the compulsion. I just need you to understand the other part, too. If I could figure out how to do that without either one of us ever leaving this apartment again, I'd try that route, but I can't." A wry smile followed. "I'm also pretty sure we'd kill each other within a week."

I ran my hands along his outstretched arms, attempting to not be amazed. "You'd give us a whole week?"

"I'm in an optimistic mood," he shrugged, and pulled on my arms until I fell against him, feeling his arms wrap themselves around my back. He fixed me with that dangerous grin of his. "And we're still sans culottes. Let's defy the laws of gravity before that changes, all right? You've kept me waiting long enough."

The intense pause in the action had done little to calm my body's reaction to his, and it hadn't seemed to slow him down much, either, because it took us no more than a few minutes to get right back to where we'd been. This time, we were looking right at one another as he pushed himself inside me, and there was nothing but that same naked honesty in his eyes, and there was nothing but a blooming trust in mine. The moment I felt him, I was at an odd peace. He wanted to be here. So did I. Whatever happened from this point onward, that truth made the thinking less important than the experiencing.

"I'm sacrificing any hope of certainty for this," I whispered, giving voice to the last remnant of hesitation in me.

"And I'm telling you that there is no certainty _but _this," he answered, his voice roughening as he thrust himself back into me. "Believe it."

And his weight on me was no burden; his weight on me was a release, lifting me up and over the cares in my mind and carrying me away, away and higher, until I was hovering over my life from a new perspective. In my entire existence, I'd never been in a circumstance that offered that sort of liberation; I'd always been so careful, and so conscious of my self, but here, with him, I could put all of that down and just be this coalition of awareness, this temporary alliance between body and mind.

"I want you," he breathed. "I want you."

That battle had already been waged and lost. "You have me," I answered him on a moan, pulling him even closer as the universe of my nerve endings collapsed with scorched-earth pleasure, leaving no regret behind while I burned and took him with me.

"I will always come back for you," he whispered in my ear as we lay there, sweaty and spent. "The world isn't smart enough or strong enough to keep me from you. As long as I'm alive, I'll be on my way back."

"I want to believe you," I whispered in return, turned inside-out by the apparent magnitude of that declaration. "I'm trying to believe you. I'm trying to trust you."

Edward put his hand over his heart. "I promise you, I'm telling you the truth. I asked you once for your promise, and I gave you my trust. Now the tables are turned for both of us. Let's not be wimps about it, okay?"

That made me laugh, and served to ease the gravity of what came before it. "If I'm not mistaken, you spent that whole day torturing me with calls from a fax machine at Kinko's."

"Yeah, well, you looked a little shifty."

"This from the leader of shifty people everywhere." I sighed, and inched my way closer to him as a palliative against the remark, even though it seemed rather to please him than insult him.

We stayed this way for some time, and it began to feel strangely...normal. Unlike partners for my previous forays into the world of sexual congress, where the preferred post-coital activity seemed to be a thousand-yard sprint off the block that was my bed, Edward was in no apparent rush to wrap it up and get on with the day. He stayed, and I stayed, and staying was comfortable. Talking was comfortable. For a non-grabby person, he seemed content to do more than his share of grabbing. It was only when neither one of us could bear to be without coffee that we finally abandoned the bedroom to shower and strike out in search of a little liquid jumpstart.

By ten a.m., we were sitting with Jasper at our diner rendezvous, giving him the download on what we'd learned about CERN.

"This sounds pretty unlikely, doesn't it? I mean, I don't know much about science, but could she really be dreaming about this stuff?" Jasper dissected his sunnyside-up eggs and frowned, concern and a pinch of fear seasoning his expression.

"It's a bit sci-fi, I'll grant you, but I have no reason to suspect that Alice knows anything at all about the experiments they're conducting there, and I've never seen her be so thrown by a dream without it resulting in some kind of real-world incident," I responded, gently shoving Edward's backpack further down the booth bench and settling in with my omelet.

Edward stacked packets of sugar and began to build a house with them, his long fingers placing the packets against one another with the practiced skill of a condiment surgeon. "It sounds — okay, I'll just say it. It sounds like an acid trip, but look at what we've got: Alice dreams things, and according to Bella, those dreams come true. She's a five-foot-nothing window-dresser, and unless somebody leaves her a warehouse full of dynamite in a will and she's having the worst day ever, I doubt she'd be capable of major destruction anywhere, let alone somewhere as unexpected as Switzerland. I don't think it's any other woman named Alice, either, because destruction on a grand scale isn't usually in a woman's bag of tricks. That leaves this place in Geneva."

I tilted my head at him. "What's that supposed to mean?" I wasn't disagreeing; I just wanted the clarification, because I couldn't see how the distinction was being made.

I couldn't watch them both at the same time, but I was pretty sure that the pair of them rolled their eyes at me. "I'm not saying you _couldn't_ do it, just that you don't generally head that way. Men are like atom bombs—everything at the drop site gets flattened. Women are more like hydrogen bombs—you leave more buildings standing, but nobody's alive to appreciate your finesse."

"There was no agenda in the question—I was honestly curious. And you know more about science than I've been led to believe."

A smirk heralded his inevitable reply. "I know more about almost everything than you've been led to believe."

"Except the meaning of the word 'humility', and how to be an anchor, and what a congressional calendar is, along with what I'm sure is a long list of other things I've yet to discover."

"Yes. Except those things you just mentioned. But I'm a quick study. For instance, I happen to know that despite the recent passage of the McKeon/Oliver Bill regarding involuntary commitment of adults in the state of New Jersey, the patient must still be diagnosed as being an imminent danger to herself or others. Alice is neither dangerous nor violent, and she appears to have accepted treatment without a fuss. All Jasper here has to do to get her out of that place is to tell her that she's free to leave."

My eyes almost fell out of my head. "Are you telling me you actually did some research? You, Mister 'Seat of My Pants', did research?"

He cocked an eyebrow in my direction. "I never said that I didn't do any research. I just said that I didn't like to do research, and you drew an erroneous conclusion. Shame on you for that, by the way. I'm so disappointed."

"You make up words," I spluttered, mortified that he'd caught me out on a stupid assumption.

"I make up good words, though. I make up words you enjoy...using." His tone was oil-slick and provoking, and he leaned against the formica table to bring his face closer to mine.

Jasper dropped his fork. "Hey now, I think we're getting into a weird area, and I'm gonna have to excuse myself if you two keep this up." He looked slightly embarrassed and uncomfortable, clearly picking up on the fact that the conversation taking place around him was laced with innuendo of some kind. His backbone straightened with military precision, and his eyes darted between the two of us as though we were poised on the verge of engaging in some inappropriate close-quarters combat, which we frankly might have been. Edward's eyes challenged me— amused, irritated, green, and something else as well—so I looked away and tried to remember why we were sitting at the Coach Diner on a Saturday morning.

"Right. So we don't need to bust her out of there like ninjas. Excellent. Um, good work on the research, Edward." I patted his hand where it lay on the tabletop, and accidentally-on-purpose took out one of the walls of his sugar-packet mansion, earning myself a little exasperated groan from him.

"Three levels," he complained. "Do you have _any_ appreciation for how rare and difficult that is?"

Jasper's spine relaxed one awkward vertebrae at a time, and we finished up our meal before heading back to Greymore to collect Alice.

"Ah, Shelley," Edward sighed dramatically as I pulled Saabie around the circular drive and entered the Visitors lot. "I'll miss her, and the way she worships me. She was fun. I might go in for a minute to say goodbye to her, and let her get a good last look at me."

"You do that," I encouraged him, not wanting to look like a jealous idiot, even though I felt like one, and waved him on as he exited the car. He'd said he wanted me, and that he'd always come back for me, but bigger and more permanent words hadn't been exchanged. For all I knew, he was coming back because he enjoyed the way I irritated him. And then I spent a moment or two accepting the fact that I was a jealous, insecure, irritating idiot. I resolved to not care too much that nobody had ever asked for my heart. I was still further than I'd ever been before. He liked me. At least, he said he did.

I had no idea whether or not I was expected to stay at his place for the entire weekend. Rather than freak out about it, I made the decision to head home that night, because Alice would be free, and I needed to sit and hug her and thank God she was safe.

Edward strolled back to the car fifteen minutes later, and folded himself into the passenger seat. "Alice is packing up," he announced. "They'll be out in about five minutes. Hey, I'm a little pissed off at you."

As usual, nothing he did or said made any kind of sense to me. "Why?

One of his hands reached up to peel mine off of the steering wheel, where they were trying to steering a car that wasn't actually going anywhere. He eyed me with a frown. "Doesn't it bug you that I just went in there with the expressed intention to flirt with a woman who we all know is so warm for my form that she sweats whenever my name is mentioned? And if it doesn't bug you, _why_ doesn't it bug you? I thought the 'we're together' thing would mean a lot of broken dishes and screaming and bouquets of flowers telling you how sorry I am."

"What do you want me to do? Pee on your leg? There aren't enough hours in my day, Edward. I can't stop you from being who you are."

I thought I was letting him know that I accepted him and how he operated. I thought that being cool about it was what he'd want, because it seemed to be what most men wanted, and I would sooner have died the most exquisitely painful death on earth than turn into one of those women who put a man on lockdown. Additionally, I hadn't been given the right to do any such thing.

His frown gathered force. "Well, that's a steaming pile of horseshit, right there. Are you saying it's fine with you, then?" I felt his mouth at my ear. "Because let me tell you something, Bella. If the situation was reversed, it would most definitely not be okay with me. Most definitely not, just so we're clear. You want to flirt for a story? Fine. You want to flirt for no reason at all? Not so much."

"I told you I wasn't going to be that impediment for you," I answered, hating that my voice was all breathy and turned-on. The lips on the mouth against my ear made contact then, moving themselves around the rim of my tragus and dragging softly down to the hinge of my jaw.

"Suit yourself, but know this going in— I'm going to be that impediment for you."

I had just been out-maneuvered. By my own insecurity, and a deviation from the anticipated script.

"Okay, it's not really fine with me, then. Quit dazzling random women for no reason, please."

I felt the lips curl into a smile before they left my skin. "That's more like it. Show me your best super-jealous face now, and we'll call it a day."

I crossed my eyes at him, and he laughed. "This 'we're together' stuff is complicated," I observed, and he nodded in agreement. It felt kind of ridiculous that I couldn't bring myself to call what we were anything formal, and even though I dreaded doing it, I found the courage to raise that point.

"I don't know what to call you. Are you my, I don't know, boyfriend, or something?" That last bit sort of tumbled out, and I probably sounded slightly angry in my effort to cover up my fear. I couldn't believe I was actually in a position to ask the question, let alone ask it of someone like him.

Edward attempted to put on a very stern expression. "Sweetheart, my lips have met all of your lips. It's a little late to be this squeamish. I'm pretty sure you've got some kind of knot in your brain that's going to object to my calling you 'girlfriend'. It's too gender-specific, right? You're a woman, not a girl? I'm defining you by your reproductive system? Although honestly, it's not like we spend all our time playing pinochle and doing gender-neutral things. I have fun with your reproductive system. I enjoy playing with it. What would you like to be called—my x-chromosome companion? Help me out, here."

"Oh, sure, laugh it up. I don't know. I guess 'girlfriend' is okay with me."

"Gee, your enthusiasm is so flattering. Fine. You're the girlfriend. This makes me the boyfriend. Let's shake on it." And the idiot stuck his hand out with mock solemnity, but I shook it anyway. "Good. Okay. I've never been a boyfriend before. The title sounds a little stupid on someone who's older than fifteen. I almost prefer 'NewsFox'. I said '_almost,_'" he cautioned, as I opened my mouth. Then he squinted a little and considered me. "We might be too smart for a situation like this. Only time will tell, but until then, I mean it—you'll get my best effort."

I nodded at him, too shy to say what I was actually thinking, which was _'Me, too. Also, oh my God, I'm your girlfriend.'_

"Oh, Jesus, I have a girlfriend," he laughed, scaring the serious crap out of me because frankly, that was a little too close to the innermost workings of my mind for comfort. "This is so...freaky. I wonder if people like Einstein and Marie Curie felt this way about _their_ experiments."

We were interrupted by the opening of the rear door on the passenger side, and the next sound I heard flooded my heart with pure joy.

"Hey! Drive—fast. They're probably on the phone with my father even as we speak, since he paid the bills."

I turned my head over my shoulder to take a peek at Alice, and what I saw made me smile, because she was wearing a baseball cap for what I was pretty sure was the first time in her entire life. Her t-shirt featured a skull smoking what appeared to be a joint, the word "REEFED" forming a pedestal of Old English text underneath the grinning bones. She was clearly tired, but her eyes were bright, and she slapped her hand repeatedly against the headrest of my seat to encourage me to burn rubber.

"I said 'move it', grandma. I won't relax until this place is a speck in the rearview mirror."

We peeled out of the lot, gravel flying up behind us as we left Greymore in our wake. Jasper pasted himself against the back of the rear bench seat, grabbing his shoulder-belt with one hand and Alice's forearm with the other.

"Holy shit—she's a maniac," he muttered, and the rest of us laughed.

"You want to beat the cabs and the lights on Second Avenue, you develop a bit of a disregard for the finer points of traffic law," I explained. "Where are we headed? And hello to you too, Ali. Nice hat."

"Shut the hell up. My hair looks like crap—I had to do something."

"Mmmhmmm. Trucker chic," I teased her. "Let's talk about how we handle Lenny and Madge, because you know they'll be at your door an hour after they find out you've flown over the cuckoo's nest."

Alice insisted on heading back to her place anyway, and once I saw the way she was looking at Jasper, and the way he was looking back at her, I didn't need much in the way of deductive powers to figure out that my grand reunion with her would probably be postponed for the night. Jasper had apparently arranged to continue his participation in the Cornell study on an outpatient basis, and since neither he nor Alice were deemed threats either to themselves or to others, they just walked out of Greymore on their own recognizance without a problem.

"What a let-down," Edward kvetched as we made our way through a relatively empty Lincoln Tunnel, the florescent bulbs on the walls casting their sickly glow over our faces in an odd Morse code of light-light-light-dark. "No lock-picking. No gadgets. No fun. What are we supposed to do with the rest of the day now? I guess we'll have to figure out the whole CERN thing, and next steps."

"I hate that this is still going to happen, but selfishly, I'm so glad it won't be me doing anything," Alice sighed, sobering up and leaning her head against Jasper's shoulder. "And I know now that it's not me. I feel it. It was always so strange to me that I dreamed my name in capital letters, because that's not my style at all. I thought it was just because everyone was shouting."

I slewed Saabie right onto Ninth Avenue, and we made our way down to Alice's apartment in the Village. "Well, I think we all agree that the likelihood of you hopping a flight to Switzerland to wreak havoc in a high-security scientific facility is pretty slim. You need to rest a little and get your strength back. It would also be really great if you could dream with more specificity, Ali, because as it stands now, we don't have a hope in hell of getting in there and figuring out what to stop and how to stop it."

She closed her eyes then, and I could see the brief burst of adrenaline provided by her release from Greymore quickly drain out of her entire body. "I'll try, B, but you know that's not how it works."

None of us said anything for a few minutes while I maneuvered the car past buses and cabs and Saturday drivers from the outer boroughs who were terrified by midtown traffic.

"Looks like you and I need to make some friends at Brookhaven," Edward tapped my arm. "Someone in that place must have an 'in' at the Geneva complex. We'll just chew our way through the geeks over there until we find that guy. Or girl. Woman. Female science person."

"Knock it off, NewsFox. It only upsets me when you do it without thinking, you know."

He grinned at me. "Then that's never, really, because I'm thinking all the time."

Alice piped up from the backseat. "Wait—did it happen already? Oh, God, it happened _already_? Why didn't you say anything, B? Dammit, I hate that this stupid science stuff made me forget to ask you about it."

One of the very few truly annoying things about having a dream forecaster for a best friend was that I recognized this outburst as Alice having seen something about Edward and me in a dream. As happy as I was to have her out of the hospital and back in our concrete jungle, I wanted to staple her lips together so that she wouldn't have the chance to say anything potentially mortifying about what she'd dreamed.

"Are you sure she's not a little kooky?" Edward murmured out of the side of his mouth. "This is kooky talk."

"She's fine," I said through clenched teeth. "And she'll stay fine if she just figures out when she needs to shut up."

Alice shook her head and leaned forward, toward us. "NewsFox. That was the big day? Whoa. Mind officially blown, Swan."

Jasper tugged on her sleeve to bring her back to his side, and she ignored him. "No, this important. And it's good, right? It's happy? I think it's happy, but there seems to be a lot of arguing, too."

Edward chose that moment to clue in to what Alice was probably babbling on about. "We don't really argue," he informed her. "And yes, it happened. Well, if by 'it', you mean the fact that Bella is now officially my x-chromosome companion." He turned to me, evil laughter lurking all over his expression. "See, I think that sounds more grownup than 'girlfriend'. I know we had an agreement, and we shook on it, but I'm asking you nicely to reconsider the title. You don't have to answer right now. Just live with it for a day or two, and see how it feels."

"Ugh. Stop it." I caught Alice's eye in the rearview mirror. "I'm not psychic, but I'm pretty sure you're going to be busy tonight. We'll catch up tomorrow, okay?"

"Leave them alone, Bitsy," Jasper gently urged her, and the nickname made me gag a little and momentarily thank my lucky stars I'd been saddled with "sweetheart". Alice raised her eyebrows at me in the rearview, then appeared to have some strange, silent eye conversation with Jasper before she settled back against the seat and closed her trap for the rest of the trip.

I double-parked in front of her building and punched the hazard lights on the dashboard to give myself a minute to say goodbye to her. Jasper held their bags over his left shoulder, offering me his right hand to shake.

"Take care of her," I ordered him while she said her goodbyes to Edward. "I don't know you very well, and I know she seems fine, but trust me when I tell you that she's not back to full strength yet. She needs sleep, and plenty of it."

"Will do. I'll, uh, just go over there by the doors. Give you two some private time." Jasper smiled down at me, his blue eyes gentle. "She's in good hands, I promise. I won't let anything happen to her."

I returned his smile; he seemed really nice, and good to her, but I had to drop a warning all the same. "She's a big girl, and she makes her own choices. I know that—but Jasper, seriously, if there's something about you or your condition that's at all dangerous or unpleasant, best off getting a room of your own, you know? I'm happy to foot the bill."

The blue eyes were still gentle, but they also turned sad. "Understood. And I realize you don't have any reason to believe me, but the last thing in the world I would ever do is hurt her or anyone else. I learned that much about myself over there in Iraq. I might be a soldier, but I'm no fighter."

I nodded and left it alone, trusting that Alice knew what was best for her. She'd spent her whole life being managed by her parents, and didn't need me to continue the tradition. Jasper ambled over to the front door of her building, and Alice turned away from the car to give me her standard-issue fierce hug.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you for always being there when I need you, B."

"Get some rest," I ordered her, returning the squeeze and kissing the side of her head. "He's cute, but you need some sleep. Call me as soon as you can, and I'll come over for a chat. And don't let your parents make you miserable, okay? They'll never understand what goes on with you, and they're just doing what they think is best, even if it sucks and they're always wrong."

She nodded and laughed. "I was going to make them wait in the lobby before buzzing them up, but Daddy would have an aneurysm. And you, B. Oh, I wish you'd just accept the fact that you finally bumped into someone who's too smart not to want you. Are you happy?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I am, even though I don't know what I'm doing, and neither does he, and he leaves in a few months." I shrugged my shoulders. "We'll talk about it later."

She hugged me again. "Okay, I won't pester you about it now. I'm going to go upstairs and tie shoelaces for an hour. I missed shoelaces. Shoelaces, and ribbon, and my big, comfortable bed. Love you."

"Love you back," I answered, giving her one more squeeze before letting her go. We waved at each other, and I slid back into the driver's seat before turning off the hazard lights and pulling away from the building.

Edward was occupied with his phone, but looked up at me as we hit the corner of Alice's block. "So, it's just after noon. Here's what I'm thinking. We grab some botulism-laced street fare for lunch, then drive on out to Brookhaven. They've got this thing called 'Science Saturdays' going on out there. It's open to the public, and there's a lecture and a tour of the RHIC accelerators. Sound like a plan to you?"

"I'm in, minus the botulism. There's a great falafel place on the next corner. Let's get some to go."

Neither one of us was starving thanks to the breakfast at the diner, but having been out in the wilds of Long Island before, we were both aware that food beyond gas station Slim Jims and bags of potato chips involved planning and detours, so we grabbed small orders of falafel and booked it through the Midtown Tunnel and down the LIE. An hour later, we pulled into the parking lot at Brookhaven Labs, picked up information booklets and tickets, and made our way into the Berkner Auditorium for the lecture and overview.

"This is like a school field trip," I whispered to Edward. "We're surrounded by bored, pimply fourteen-year-olds and their parents."

"If it gets really boring, we can always make out," he answered, slinging his arm behind my back in invitation.

I thought back to the field trips of my youth, when I deliberately took the first seat on the bus, the first spot in line, and the first row of any lecture space. I sat alone, and while part of me really was that eager to learn about anything, there was also a part of me that sat or stood where I did so that I wasn't forced to watch my classmates slap and tickle each other in the ageless dance of colliding hormones. I was never invited to dance along, and the wallflower in me stubbornly refused to show anyone that it hurt.

And here I sat, in the middle of this beautiful auditorium, with the arm of the most beautiful, smart, talented man I'd ever seen on the back of my chair. It was disorienting and thrilling, and I felt warm all over because it wasn't my looks that brought him here; it was the thing I found most important about myself that did.

The auditorium lights flashed, a signal to the audience that the lecture was about to begin. Edward slipped his glasses on and squinted at the pamphlet we'd been handed, while I watched the physicist take his place behind the center-stage lectern.

I don't know what I was expecting, really. Banner had pretty much lived up to my expectations with regard to a scientific academician; he'd been gray and slightly rumpled, and everything about him practically shouted the fact that he lived in a non-corporeal world of books and theories. But the scientist at this lectern blew that image out of the water, because he was young, and smiling, and dressed like he collected his mail at a J. Crew store.

"Hey—thanks so much for coming out here this afternoon," he said with an easy grin. "I'm Doctor Jacob Black, and I'm one of the team leaders on Brookhaven's PHENIX program. For those of you who fell asleep before finishing the boring pamphlet we hand out about it, PHENIX's mission is to create and study quark-gluon plasma via high-energy collisions of heavy ions and protons. I'll get to more on that later, and I swear I'll make an effort to keep you conscious when I do. But right now, I just want to take you through a very brief history of Brookhaven's RHIC collider, which was the first machine in the world designed to smash particles together to try and figure out how we all got here, and where we might be going."

Edward peered out over the top of his glasses and raised his eyebrows. "Hmmm," he hummed. "Not what I thought we were in for. Might be easier to bond with a guy like that, though, because he looks like he gets out and about more than once a year."

The notion of bonding with him appeared to be an interesting one to virtually every woman in the room as well. Rather than just talk to hear the sound of his own voice, he led the lecture like an informal conversation, welcoming questions and interruptions as he went. And there were lots of questions, one of which was whether or not he was married. He wasn't, and actually blushed when he admitted it, causing many of the women in the audience to flutter their hands to their chests in an "oooh, how adorable" response.

"Cheesy," Edward grunted beside me, and I stifled a laugh.

"You just can't stand not being the 'It' boy, can you?"

"Oh, I'm pretty sure I could take him in a charm duel," he yawned. "And furthermore, I'm not really interested in attracting that kind of response from anyone here, unless they can help us figure out what to do about Geneva."

I poked him in his side. "Well, I'm here, too, you know."

He grabbed my pokey index finger before it could strike again. "Sweetheart, I want you to find me many things, but 'cute' isn't one of them."

Black took us through Brookhaven's history, explaining the birth of collider experiments and how they were changing the way that physicists understood the universe. He touched briefly on CERN and the various experiments conducted there, and it was clear that he'd be an excellent source of information on the subject.

As he finished the lecture, he instructed the audience to gather their things for the trip over to the collider facility. We stood and stretched, and Edward led the way over to the aisle to file out to the transport buses. I was almost at the door to the auditorium when I felt a gentle tap against my left shoulder.

"Excuse me," a voice said, and I turned to find myself face to face with the adorable physicist we'd been listening to for the past forty-five minutes. "You're Bella Swan, right? I can't — I mean, wow, what an unexpected honor to have you here. I'm a huge fan."

# # #

A/N - Hi! You people, with your amazing reviews, and your favoritings and alertings, and your recommendings — you people. I don't have the words to tell you all how much I appreciate it. I read each and every review, and believe me when I tell you that they make the effort of researching and writing this worth every minute. Like Edward, I just wish I could clone myself to give me enough time to answer them all.

Ciaobella27, littlesecret84, and spanglemaker9 pre-read this chapter to make sure I didn't make my narcolepsy too obvious. You know what? I love them, and they're the most awesome humans ever.

Thank you so much to everyone who voted for me in the Hidden Star Awards. "Breaking News" won for "Best Kiss"!

I posted a second outtake/epilogue-thingy for "The Port Angeles Players". If you were following along on that story, you might want to wander over there and check it out. The link is on my profile page.

Littlesecret84 and ciaobella27 have both started new stories: "On Grey Mornings" and "America's Sweethearts". If you're not already reading them, I'm not sure what's wrong with you. Shoo!


	18. Je me lance vers la gloire

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Je me lance vers la gloire

"Coming out here was a waste of time. And why is every piece of furniture in this house white? It looks like Stanley Kubrick was their interior decorator. 'Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?'"

We were walking through Dr. Black's impressive home in Quioque, on the tony South Fork of Long Island. It was done in typical Hamptons-chic, suggesting a casual, beachy vibe that in reality must have cost the homeowner untold careful thousands to achieve. Enormous windows banked an interrupted view of the lawn and the inlet beyond, the glow from several dozen white pillar candles reflecting against the glass surface and providing a sub-corona to the setting sun.

"Stop grumbling," I smiled, as we made our way down a hallway lined with gorgeous framed black-and-white images of who I assumed were various Black family members. "It's nice. He's nice. Behave yourself, and don't talk like demented computers."

Edward wiggled his head in sarcasm, pretending to repeat what I'd just said in order to mock me, but he cleared his expression when Dr. Black joined us at the entrance to the great room at the end of the hallway.

"I can't believe you actually drove all the way out here for this," he smiled warmly, holding his hand out to shake mine. "God, I hope we don't bore you to death, although it's probably only fair to warn you that there's a definite possibility we will." He stopped shaking my hand, but held onto it all the same, covering it with his other one. "Thanks for making the trip—and my week. Well, my year, really."

Edward cleared his throat, the action far from innocent, and Dr. Black shifted his eyes from mine. "Oh, I'm sorry; that was unbelievably rude. Hey, er, Edward, right? It's great to see you again, too."

"Yeah," Edward answered, drawing the word out until it was painfully obnoxious. "Oh, yeah. Great. Thanks for inviting _us_."

"Ignore him," I laughed, trying to ease the awkwardness. "Sea air doesn't agree with him. Who do we have, here?" I gently tugged his hands to turn him around so that we could consider the group of people in the great room, variously sitting and standing around in amiable little clusters.

"It's a real nerdfest, I'm afraid," Black sighed. "I was hoping we could grab a few of the cooler neighbors around here, but they pretty much stick to the city in the winter months, so it's just our regular Saturday night get-together. Of course, if I had any idea I was going to meet you today, I'd have planned it better. Your competition lives on the other side of the creek, by the way; if it were a little lighter outside, you could probably see into his living room."

My y-chromosome companion raised his eyebrows. "Coop? Oh, well, that's just perfect, isn't it."

Black chuckled. "He's a nice enough guy. Doesn't throw a whole lot of crazy parties, which the rest of us on the creek appreciate. Come on, you two: let's get you drinks, and I'll introduce you around—not that you need any introductions, I mean." The hand that was covering mine traveled up to my elbow, and he steered me over to a knot of serious-looking men near the fieldstone fireplace while Edward trailed behind us and broke left to invade a different group.

I tried really, really hard to keep up with the conversation, but they were neck-deep in a debate about how to name thirty-two new exoplanets discovered by the European Space Agency earlier in the month, and the relative merits of the Kepler mission versus those of the PLATO project to find thousands of additional exoplanets, while I still had no idea what the hell an exoplanet actually was. I waited for a break in the heady chatter, and then launched my own question into orbit.

"There's so much mystery to these discoveries; it's almost impossible for the layperson to fathom things you people take for granted. I mean, sure, we understand there might be planets out there that are capable of sustaining life, but you guys? You're actually figuring out how to find those places, and once you do, you'll work on figuring out how we can get there. It's amazing, and humbling." I let myself sigh a little in admiration. " I only wish I understood more of the science behind news like this. For instance, we did a piece on the startup of the Hadron collider earlier this week when they announced the reactivation, but I was left with a lot of questions about the program in general. It sounds fascinating, but I still have no idea what CERN is hoping to accomplish with something like ALICE. Anyone care to take pity on me and try to break it down?" I flashed them a winning, innocent smile, and hoped that my hair looked good enough for them to want to school me on the subject.

Three pairs of eyes turned to mine, looking variously befuddled and amused. In my peripheral vision, I caught Edward rolling his eyes at me over the head of the insect-like woman who was desperately casting around for a subject with which to arrest his attention.

Barney, one of the men in my circle, offered the basic lead-ion collision/quark-gluon plasma explanation I'd heard from Banner, his words tentative as though he genuinely feared freaking me out with too many technical references. "Does that make sense?" he kept asking, and I nodded along because none of what he was telling me was new. He was also a close-talker, and I had to keep subtly backing away each time he tried to make a point.

"Yep," I nodded, smiling again. "I'm with you so far. I guess what kind of worries me is...well, nobody really knows what's going to happen if these experiments succeed, right? I mean, you can guess, but you don't really know. What if, um, you get more than you bargained for?"

"Are you suggesting we'll accidentally turn the world into a mushroom, or a hockey puck, or an order of lo mein?" Black's voice was right behind me, and it was most definitely amused. He tapped me gently on the shoulder and handed me a glass of wine. "I promise you, there's nothing diabolical going on, and we're pretty good with the guesswork."

"But something _could_ go wrong, right?"

Black laughed his physicist's laugh, and the rest of the men around me followed suit. "Oh, Bella. Sorry, I'm not laughing at you, I promise. It's not as though you're the first person on earth who's a little suspicious about what we'll find. A group of physicists who disagree with the experiments actually took their case to the European court a few years ago. But honestly, even if these experiments go very right, or very wrong, we're not working with large enough quantities of anything for there to be any kind of major repercussions."

I squinted up at him, and the smile I got in return was a warm and understanding one. "That doesn't actually answer my question, Dr. Black."

His hand came to rest in the middle of my back. "It doesn't, does it—and please, call me Jake. All right then, here's your answer: of course something _could_ go wrong, but we did do a fair bit of research before we even decided to test the theories, and all of the potential outcomes have already been considered. There are some really crazy theories out there, too: a handful of people are convinced that the collider's being sabotaged by time-travelers from the future, intent on keeping us from stumbling into the Higgs boson. Granted, we haven't come up with a way to prevent ninja attacks from the future, but otherwise, we've pretty much got it covered."

"Okay, that one does sound completely bonkers," I admitted, forced by the absurdity of it all into my own laughter. "But what about things like strangelets? I mean, those could really happen, right?"

Black's eyebrows raised. "Ah, you've been doing your homework. Yes, strangelets are theoretically possible. Have you ever seen _Ghostbusters_?"

"The movie?"

He nodded. "Remember their containment system? We'd need something similar, and we'd have to store up strangelet events for a really long time before we collected enough of them to do any kind of damage. Ditto that for black holes. It's theoretically possible, but everyone at CERN would have to be hell-bent on world destruction in order to make it happen, and involved in a huge conspiracy to hide a doomsday storage facility we have neither the knowledge nor the ability to actually build. Trust me when I say that they're not Daleks—I've got more than my share of friends involved in the various projects over there, and they're all just interested in harmless, geeky science stuff."

I frowned, prompting another laugh from him. "You look so disappointed. Sorry; we come in peace, I swear it. Since I'm one of the team leaders on ALICE's stateside sister project, I hope you'll take my word on this." And then he leaned in to me. "If you need further convincing, or you want someone to protect you from the theoretical danger, just let me know," he murmured in my ear, the smooth, rich tone of his voice reverberating in a not-unpleasant way.

"What are you kids chatting about over here?" Edward's sardonic interruption caused Jake to abruptly lift his head away from mine, but his hand remained on my back.

"Oh, hey, Edward. We were talking about the fact that physicists like me aren't really out to destroy the universe. We just want to understand it."

"Mmmhmmm," Edward nodded. "I don't suppose there's any way you'd be willing to understand me a glass of wine too, is there? Your friend Margueritte just got through giving me a pop quiz about dialectical materialism, and Marxist theorizing always leaves me a little...parched." He raised his eyebrows to punctuate the request and stared down Jake with less-than-polite expectation.

"God—sorry. I got distracted," Jake apologized, and sounded sincere as he did so. "I'll be right back. Is white okay, or would you rather have the red?"

"I'll have whatever Isabella's having. We share the same taste in wine, among other things."

Jake shook his head a little, but Edward's expression remained bland. The hand on my back vacated its post, and followed its owner into the kitchen.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," Edward continued smoothly. "I'm just going to borrow Bella for a moment. We'll be right back." And with that, he wrapped his hand under my elbow and steered me away into an adjacent corner of the large room.

"What's up?" I asked when we were out of earshot. "Does Marxist theorizing making you grumpy, too? You look pretty ticked off."

He glowered down at me. "Are you having fun?"

"Oh, loads," I answered sarcastically. "But so far, nobody around here is willing to admit that anything big could go wrong in Geneva. We need to get closer to someone who's actually there. And you need to smile, because you look like you're ready to take a swing at someone. What the hell is your problem?"

"I don't like the touching," he said through a clenched-teeth smile. "Not a fan of the touching."

"Come on, buzz off and let me work him," I shot back through clenched teeth of my own. "He knows people that we need to know, and he's really nice. Go spread that famous charm of yours, and find your own nerd."

His green eyes carefully searched mine. "This is for the story, though, right?"

I pursed my lips together, as it suddenly dawned on me that he was...jealous. I'd made Edward jealous. As unlikely as that possibility seemed to me, I had all the evidence I needed looking at me with irritation and possessiveness, and oh, that was just one of the nicest feelings I'd ever had. My goal had never been to make him jealous, though; it was more than enough for me to know that I could, even if it was entirely accidental.

"This is for the story," I confirmed with a grin. "Now go away and give me some space, please."

"Fine. I still don't like the touching, though."

Jake returned with a glass of wine in hand, which Edward took with a nod and a terse "thanks". I tilted my chin at him, and he sighed and headed back to the party to troll for fresh victims, wiggling his fingers behind Jake's back to remind me that he'd appreciate it if the maximum hand count on my body totaled two—my own.

Alone with me for the first time, Jake smiled. "You know, every time someone calls you 'Isabella', I'm reminded of the fact that the very first collider experiment bore the name 'ISABELLE'. Did you know that? It was back in the 70s, and they started building it right here at Brookhaven. Geneva beat us to the punch, so the project was scrapped in the 80s, and most of the material was repurposed for the RHIC two decades later. In my mind, you're more connected with what I do than you might think you are."

"Are you making that up?" I laughed, slightly freaked out by the revelation that both my name and the name of the best and only true friend I had in the world coincidentally marked lunatic forays into the great unknown frontiers of science.

Jake shook his head and smiled again. "Nope. Actual fact. Do you think it's some kind of accident that a lot of scientific programs are named after girls? It's the closest some of these guys will ever get to the real thing. You should be there when they're coming up with the acronyms. They do everything they can to twist things around until they come up with a name that sounds even remotely female."

I took a deliberate moment to study him before I answered. "Yeah, well, I don't think that's much of a problem for you, is it? You hardly fit the stereotype of a gawky professor, unless they're doing some kind of cross-pollination experiments with the guys from the hot firemen calendar."

His cheeks colored faintly under smooth, olive skin. "Um, thanks? I wish I could take that credit, but my mother was a very beautiful woman, and she was nice enough to pass along a few good genes. Here—" he stretched out his arm and invited me to walk ahead of him, and we returned to the hallway lined with beautiful family photographs. Jake pointed to one frame, which held a stunning picture of a graceful woman with a long, dark curtain of hair. It was taken in what was clearly a dance studio; her arms were curved around a large, white balloon, and she stood on one foot with her other leg extended in an exquisite arc behind her. The expression on her face was serene, but there was vitality and strength and focus in everything about her.

"She's lovely," I murmured, suddenly wishing my own mother, with all her carefree, self-absorbed inattention, lived closer to me than she did.

"She was," he agreed quietly. "And funny. So, so funny. When she passed away, she left long shadows. My father hasn't been the same since. He blames himself, because he was driving." There was silence for a moment, and then Jake tilted his head. "Anyway, dad moved into an assisted-living facility in Greenport after the accident, and I stayed here. It's a great house, but not exactly practical if you're in a wheelchair. And I have no idea why I'm telling you all of this. Sorry." He was clearly embarrassed, under the impression that the overshare was in some way unpleasant.

"Hey." I put my hand on his forearm and shook it gently, wanting to offer him something in exchange for his sudden vulnerability. "My dad's a cop. That sounds pretty hairy, until I go on to tell you that he's a cop in the tiniest little nothing of a town, and his big thrill of the week is busting up the Friday night checkers game at The Rusty Nail when Jim the mailman and old man Murphy get their beer on a little too successfully."

"I had no idea checkers were so dangerous."

"You can't imagine. It's like a blood sport where I'm from." Awkward tension dispersed, we wandered back to the open space of the great room and back to the assembled company, chatting easily about growing up on opposite coasts.

His hand landed on my shoulder before we could rejoin the party, and stopped my forward motion. "So, now I need you to tell me something."

I raised an eyebrow at him, unsure whether I was in for a round of furious flirting or something slightly more complicated, and unwilling to jump to any conclusions until he'd revealed himself.

"What are you really doing here, Bella?" He leaned in again and keeping his voice low. "Don't tell me you two drove all the way to the East End so you could hang out with science geeks. As much as I wish I could, I don't flatter myself enough to believe that you'd do that just to spend a little time getting to know me."

My stare was a blank one, and he laughed. "Smart guy, remember? I'd hate to think my father wasted all that dough on Harvard and MIT. And I really like you, but even more than that, if you need some help with something, I'll do my best to give that to you. Just don't make me guess, okay? I mean, I'm nice, but I've got nerve endings, too."

For the second time in the space of a few short weeks, I found myself staring up at a handsome, intelligent, interesting man who was apparently attracted to me. 'Where were you guys when I was hanging out at home on prom night?' I wondered. But as handsome, intelligent, and interesting as Jake was, he wasn't Edward, and never would be, and the distinction my heart made between them was immediate and not up for debate. This man was clearly terrific, and once upon a time he might have given me very good reasons for looking forward to time away from the job, but for all his obvious charms, he couldn't hold a Bic lighter against the all-consuming conflagration of the senses that was my co-anchor.

"My turn to apologize, Jake." The words were sad, and soft, because I was indeed sad to have to hurt him in any way. "You're great. I'm just—"

A rueful smile curved his lips, and he held up his hand. "Yeah. You're just. I get it. It's not as though I couldn't tell the minute the two of you walked through the door. I had to ask, though, right? Never mind. Forget I said anything. Tell me why you're really here, and I'll see if I can help you."

"Thank you. Would you mind if I, um..."

Jake shook his head and grimaced. "Sure, sure. Call him over. He's here even when he's not, anyway."

Of course, Edward's eyes had been trained on us ever since we reemerged from the hallway, and one look from me was all it took to get him to disengage from the now-several women and men who had ranged themselves in a tight little circle around him, like so many covered wagons of lust and envy. He detached from them with a Smile of Death, and sauntered over to where we stood.

"Jake's offered to help us, even though he has no idea what it is we need help with at the moment. Talk about living dangerously," I added with a smile.

"That so?" Edward's expression was clearly suspicious.

Jake shrugged. "If I can. And if you tell me what's going on. And if it's mostly legal."

"We have reason to believe that something disastrous will happen at CERN next month. I need your help to get me closer to someone over there so we can figure out what's going to happen and how to stop it before it does."

His eyebrows drew close together, and he frowned at me as I explained. "Are you serious? Where are you getting this information? I think someone's feeding you a line. Maybe one of the other networks wants to see you embarrass yourself or something. I'm telling you, Bella, there's no way the LHC creates any kind of massive issue for anyone, with anything. It's just not scientifically possible. Can you tell me who's saying there'll be a problem?"

Edward cleared his throat. "I don't think we want to expose the source, but let's just say that we believe it's a reliable one. Listen, what harm could it do to go poke around a little bit? If it's as safe as you say it is, well, we just look like idiots, and that's fine with me."

"Yeah, I'm praying we're idiots," I added.

Deep in thought, Jake scratched the back of his head. "You might be okay with looking like an idiot, but it's my reputation on the line, and believe me when I tell you that the pond I swim in is a small one, full of nasty sharks."

"One way or another, we're getting in," Edward responded calmly. "Through the window, through the door, dressed as Von Trapp Family singers—doesn't matter. We're not doing it to embarrass anyone over there. If something's going to happen, we'd really rather stop it before it does, because I don't look good in the color 'dead'. You can make it easier for us, or not. Your choice, but we're getting in either way."

As though I didn't already have more than ample reason to be attracted to him, the certainty with which he delivered this speech sent the most amazing shiver down my spine, and compelled me to reach for his hand. His fingers wrapped around mine and squeezed, and I had never felt so completely supported in my life. "Thank you," I whispered, and he grinned down at me.

"Fine. I'll see what I can do, but I'm not making any promises. I think your best shot is probably Arturo Castiglione. He's the chairperson for the ALICE off-line project, so he's close to the experiment, but not directly involved in day-to-day operations. He lives for conspiracy theories, and he's paranoid, so you'll love him. The boards usually hold weekly status meetings; that'd be the best day to talk to him, because he doesn't come up for air for the rest of the week. Let me see if I can arrange a phone call or something."

"That would be amazing of you. Really, thanks, Jake. And I promise, we're not out to hurt anyone. We just want some answers. This isn't for the network—it's personal." I grabbed his hand with my free one. He held it for a moment, and then abruptly let go.

"Please don't screw me on this. I'll get you in touch with Aro, and then I'm taking myself out of the loop. I can't be involved, and I can't compromise my position at Brookhaven. If anyone asks me, I just fielded your call for a contact in Geneva."

"I thought all of you guys were about boldly going where no man had gone before. Where's your 'damn the common sense' spirit?" Edward razzed him.

"Buried under a stack of federal funding paperwork," Jake shot back. "It's not as though this particular field gives you a whole lot of second chances. If you're labeled 'undesirable' for whatever reason, you don't come back from that."

I assured him that he'd be kept well out of it, and we left it at that, with Jake promising to call Geneva to reach out to Aro. Mission accomplished, we lingered at the party for another half-hour or so before making our excuses and heading back to Manhattan.

One look at Kathy's face when I walked into the office on Monday morning was enough to tell me that something unpleasant was afoot. "What?" I asked, as I stopped in front of her desk to collect my messages.

"Your cat's out of the bag." She handed me a copy of that Sunday's edition of the _New York Daily News_, which was opened to the "Gatecrasher" gossip column.

_'Nosy Newsies Get Cozy_

_When ABN puts a new anchor team on the air, they take the pairing process seriously. Spotted at Alto last week by one savvy diner were none other than Isabella Swan and Edward Cullen, ABN's dynamic new evening news duo, getting up close and personal with each other. Current affairs, indeed. 'They were making out like horny teenagers,' our well-fed spy reports. What's next? An x-rated film at 11? Stay tuned...'_

"Crap."

"What's crap?" Emmett came up behind me and peered over my shoulder. "Oh, that. Nobody's business, Swan. Ignore it. Although you need to tell me what the hell you were thinking, because that was pretty stupid."

"Hmmm," said a voice next to me, and I jumped, startled to find that Edward had joined the conversation. "I'm a little insulted, frankly. Surely we've got more flair than horny teenagers. Also, didn't Rush and Molloy meet each other in the newsroom? Talk about glass houses."

"You can't imagine how happy I am that there aren't any pictures," Kathy said, her face giving all the appearance of having recently encountered something particularly sour or foul-smelling.

I realized that I hadn't even told my parents what was going on. "Oh, God, my mother's going to kill me. She had to find this out in print instead of in a phone call from her daughter," I groaned, and Edward patted my shoulder in mock sympathy.

"Cheer up. I don't mind kissing you again in front of her, if that'll help."

Peter blew through the door a minute later, and spent a productive ten minutes of his day lecturing us on the importance of discretion while we nodded along, reminding him that the incident occurred before our meeting with the brainiacs in PR and the "no comment" law was enacted. "Kissing isn't commentary, anyway," Edward argued.

"It might not be a comment, but it's certainly a statement," Peter retorted. "Keep your tongues to yourselves when you're out in public, whether you're talking with them or, you know, doing something else with them. Tomorrow's Election Day—get busy."

"You mean 'get busy' as in 'do some work around here', not 'get busy' as in 'get busy', right?"

"Listen, the only people getting screwed around here tomorrow had better be the voting public," Peter snapped at Edward, completely exasperated. "Quit testing my patience. Victor's got everyone waiting for you next door."

I called my mother as soon as it was early enough for her to be awake, and held the phone far from my ear while she first shrieked, then pelted me with a barrage of grossly-inappropriate questions, most of which I didn't answer. "Are you happy, baby?" she asked me, and I told her that I was. Edward made me happy, and while thoughts of the future still terrified and troubled me, the conviction and honesty with which he operated made it difficult to doubt that this was what it should be for the moment.

Off-year elections were far less exciting to cover than either mid-terms or Presidential elections, but returns still had to be counted, and given the current political landscape, every race stood the chance of tipping the scales toward one side or the other. Edward took the analyst interviews during our extended coverage, while I fielded the live remotes from campaign headquarters in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, and we spent some quality time together in front of the smart board outlining the various mayoral and referendum issues across the country. It was reasonably quiet until some yahoo from the movement to repeal Maine's gay marriage law decided to spew a little vitriol on the subject via live remote, and Edward allowed himself to get drawn into a debate despite Ben's cues from control.

"I just don't understand why this is such an issue for you," Edward challenged. "Why shouldn't gay Americans have the right to be as legally miserable as straight Americans when it comes to their choice of mates?"

"Homosexuality is unnatural, and permitting homosexuals to enter into the sacred covenant of marriage cheapens the meaning of the institution," the organizer countered.

"I'll tell you what's unnatural: your fascination with what happens in other people's bedrooms. I know it gets cold up there in Maine, and you're probably a little bored in the winter, but maybe you should find a different hobby. Have you ever considered making your own maple syrup?"

"Bella, get in there and break this up before I have to cut to commercial and smash his mic into a thousand little pieces," Ben hissed in my ear as the referendum spokesperson went ballistic. Control cued up the headquarters for the California District 10 race, and Rose signaled me to move.

"Well, this is a fascinating discussion, and I'm sure we'd all like to see how it plays out, but right now, we need to check in with John Garamendi's campaign headquarters to find out how early exit polls are running in the California Congressional race," I interrupted, my voice slicing through Edward's enumeration of the many ways in which maple syrup served mankind. I could hear Ben order the reporter in California to improvise while we settled down the studio, and then he cut the studio feed to Maine so that Edward's chew toy no longer existed.

"You can't do that, Edward," I seethed. "We're not here to judge anyone, and the fact that you judged the man for his opinion makes you as bad as he is. Don't you see that?"

"Of course I see it. I see it, and I don't care, because watching people waste time and energy on opposing nonsense like this when there are _real_ problems in this country makes me a little testy. Also? He started it."

"You don't get to decide what's important to everyone. Unless you're planning to run for office, keep it to yourself and don't make the people who join us on-air look like morons just because they happen to disagree with you. It makes us look biased, and you know better. What the hell happened to your objectivity?"

"Hey, hothead," Peter called as he joined us at the desk. "Simmer down. I don't mind you having an opinion, but I very much mind you insulting an invited guest. Got the distinction?"

Disgruntled, Edward nodded. "Loud and clear. You should have gone with the robot, Peter."

"Just get on the line and apologize to him. When we cut back to the studio, you're going to apologize to the audience as well. They're not here to watch you throw down. This is a serious issue and part of a national debate, whether you like it or not. We don't disrespect different viewpoints around here."

Everybody calmed down, apologies were offered (however grudgingly), and the broadcast continued without incident. I was surprised to note that Emmett could find no better way to kill a boring Tuesday night than to hang around the studio, especially when he didn't have to be here and there wasn't much of anything beyond Edward's ill-timed outburst to capture his interest. As the evening wore on, I noticed Emmett's eyes following Rose wherever she went. She never turned to face him, but the way in which she held her head slightly to the side made it obvious to me that she was keeping tabs on his whereabouts as well, and was acutely conscious of the way he was studying her.

I cornered Emmett at the end of the broadcast, determined to find out what was going on, and he immediately launched evasive action.

"You don't have enough on your social plate, Bella? Now you want to dig into my issues?"

"Come on. I'm curious, because this isn't like you. We're friends, right? I like Rose a lot, and there's weirdness with you two, and I'm only saying that I'm here and wondering what the hell it's all about. You know me, Em. I'm not going to talk to anyone else about it; I just want to know if there's a problem and if I can help, even if it's only by listening to you."

A loud sigh was my answer. "I don't know what to tell you. I was an asshole, and the wage of being an asshole is a freeze-out."

"So? Apologize for being an asshole, then. If she knows you at all, she knows that you're a good guy even if you can be a jerk every once in a while."

"Not gonna happen, but I appreciate the thought. I'm sure she doesn't want to hear it after all this time, anyway."

I curled my arm around his waist. "We always want to hear it. It might not turn the situation around, but we always want to hear it."

He gently untangled himself from me. "I'll think about it. Can we be done with the sensitive stuff? We need to talk about that thing with the documentary film guy and the antibiotics in livestock feed, because I got six voicemail messages from some activist group in Houston, and the guys at the FDA are crawling up my colon with their own agenda."

The conversation was clearly closed for the moment, but I made a mental note to revisit it at some point in the not-too-distant future. We rode the elevator back up to the office to grab our things and shut down for the night, chatting along the way about how to balance the two sides of the antibiotic issue.

The rest of the week was a quiet one, both on the news front and on the personal front. Edward and I hadn't settled into any kind of a regular routine, but then again, I was pretty sure that Edward would never be a "regular routine" kind of person, and so I tried to just roll with it. It was completely bizarre and wonderful. We spent our days working like mad things, like the stern pair of rowers on a crew team, the blades of our oars hitting the water with what looked like long-practiced synchronization, both of us in a perfect zone with the tasks at hand. We spent most of our nights cheating at Scrabble, learning one another, and locked in endless debates about everything under the sun. I was feeling more and more comfortable with the constant unpredictability of what lay between us, equally unsurprised by both the tenderness and the tension at that point. If he needed time to himself, he certainly never indicated it, although he never made me feel crowded at all. The clock kept moving, and I kept falling, and he stood there, ready to catch me.

"Kathy!" he bellowed on Friday afternoon, and I could feel her roll her eyes from my position way behind my desk on the opposite side of the office.

"Use the intercom, or I'm not answering you," she shouted back over the Talking Heads.

"You just answered me. Get in here. I need you to tell me where the thing for the thing is. It's not here. Where the hell did you put it?"

"Intercom. And I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa. Jesus, David Byrne singing in French is painful. Come on, the thing. The thing that goes under the linoleum and keeps it from sliding around. Where are you hiding it, Cruella?"

"Oh my _God_." Exasperated, she slammed the huge binder in which she stashed the Nielson reports down on her desk. I watched her as she pushed herself out of her chair and stormed over to his door.

"You want to start with the name-calling? Do you? I will dust your overprivileged ass for you, whitebread."

"Bring it. I've got insults in six different languages, all stored up and waiting for a girl like you."

Shaking my head, I dragged myself away from a recap on consumer credit spending figures and made my way over to his office.

"What is it with you two and Fridays? You need to get your shots in before you part ways for the weekend?"

Kathy shrugged. "It's cheaper than the gym I never go to." Then she strolled over to his unused closet and opened it up, showcasing the missing grip-mat with her hand. "See? If it's not in your office space, there are only a few places it could be hiding, Sherlock."

"Ca me fait chier," he muttered, and even I had enough French slang to work that one out. "Why didn't I think to look there? Hey, thanks."

She waved at him and walked back out to her desk, while I wandered further into his office and settled myself in one of his chairs. "'Psycho Killer'? Really? That's beyond inappropriate."

"I'm about to interview the Beltway Sniper on death row; it's perfectly appropriate. My flight's at nine, but I'll be back by tomorrow afternoon. Early dinner?" Linoleum arranged and anchored to his satisfaction, he started to tap his feet against it, shoving his hands into his pockets while he searched for the rhythm he wanted.

"Yes."

"Oh, I like it when you say 'yes'. I like it very much."

"How did that get dirty?" I wondered out loud, and his grin turned into a laugh. His tapping was brisk, and he looked more than a little edgy. I squinted at him. "What's up with you? You're not nervous about this, are you?"

His whole face answered in a sarcastic negative. "I just feel like moving. All the prep stuff for this piece is making me crazy. Tanya spent three days negotiating with his attorney, and I really had to fight to get him to agree. I just want to get there and do the thing, already. They push the button on him next Tuesday."

He mauled me soundly in the green room following the broadcast, then slung his garment bag and his backpack over his left shoulder and booked it to the waiting town car for the trip out to LaGuardia, leaving me alone with my disturbing realization that 400 miles of space between us for fewer than twenty-four hours was enough to make my skin ache from the lack of him.

Alice and I finally had a night to ourselves, though, because Jasper was on an overnight at Greymore. We hunkered down in my apartment, and I caught her up on what we'd learned about CERN before we killed two bottles of wine and floated away on a tannin-soaked cloud of girl talk.

"So, Jasper, yeah?" I knew she'd tell me anything I wanted to know, but I was afraid she might not realize it if something wasn't quite right with him. She looked so free, so perfectly happy, that I prayed with everything in me he was the best-case scenario for a veteran spoiled by war.

"What the hell are we going to tell our grandkids about how we met?" she laughed. "It's so stupid. I'm sitting here, and I love you to pieces—I mean, you're practically one of my limbs, you know? But at the same time, part of me is sad about the fact that tonight is the first night in a month that I haven't had his arms around me. I had no idea I could be this...sappy. I'm sickening. I'd tell you to knock some sense into me, but I don't want any sense, so don't even try. Oh, god, look away. It's disgusting."

She was alternately frowning and smiling the sweetest smile, and she buried her head in her hands with a groan.

"Cute," I teased her, loving the fact that the tall, quiet man with the sad eyes had done something so marvelous to my friend, even though he called her "Bitsy". I would learn to deal with the name if it meant seeing her glow like this, because she'd spent so much of her life hiding who she really was from the world.

"He doesn't think I'm weird," she murmured, and seemed so shocked by that fact. "I mean, he's seen the worst of it, and he still doesn't think I'm weird. That probably makes him weird, too, but I don't care."

"Well, you're definitely weird, and so is he, and you can get married and have weird little babies with crazy blonde curls and freakishly small feet."

"We'll name them all Bella—even the boys."

"Step off, Bitsy," I laughed, pushing her shoulder a little and grabbing my wine glass from the coffee table.

"Talk to me about Edward Cullen. Speak words of his magnificence, and how he makes your eyes sweat, or whatever the hell it is he's doing to you."

The mere mention of his name caused my heart rate to spike, and I cursed myself. "He's unbelievably arrogant, and argumentative, and hot-headed. He honestly doesn't give a good goddamn about appearances or protocol. He won't hesitate to tell me when I'm being an idiot, but can't stand it when he does something stupid. He cheats at Scrabble. He's smart as hell, and more than a little funny, and all heart wrapped in sandpaper, and I'm pretty sure I'm falling in love with him."

"He sounds perfect for you."

"He's leaving," I told her. "He's leaving, and that scares me to death."

"B, we're all born leaving, one way or another. You need to cowboy up and decide to enjoy what you've got while you've got it."

"Cowboy up? Who _are_ you?"

"What? It's an expression," she retorted, but the grin she was hiding underneath the words let me know that there were probably a few more interesting "Jasperisms" now making a home in her stash of idioms.

"Do you, um..." I wanted to ask her whether or not she'd dreamed anything about Edward and me. I wanted to know whether this would turn out to be the best thing in my life, or the worst decision I'd ever made. Putting everything in her hands like that was clearly both unfair and cowardly, though. "You know what? Never mind. Ali, it would be one thing if he was just going away to cover stories, and then coming back. He's going back out there and staying back out there, and I won't see him for months at a time. He'll be in places where he can't let me know he's okay, and he'll be surrounded by the worst stuff happening on earth at any given moment. His best friend is gone, the body lost forever in a jungle full of angry rhetoric and machine guns. I don't know if I'm strong enough to handle that."

Her gaze rose to meet mine, the expression in them somber and searching, telling me nothing about what she may or may not have seen in her dreams. "Is he worth that risk to you?"

All I could do was nod and tell the truth. "He'll break my heart. Oh, god, he'll break my heart, but yeah. I'm going to let him." Alice put her forehead on my shoulder in sympathy and sighed, but said nothing more about it, leaving me to figure out how I would go about accepting my fate as the woman who loved Edward Cullen.

He called me from the car on his way back to Manhattan the following afternoon, full of rage about the senseless waste of life, of wasted tax dollars, wasted appeals, and wasted effort trying to find coherence in an act of madness. "You want to call him insane. You want to call anyone who'd do something like this insane, but he's perfectly calm, and reasonable, and quiet, and well-spoken. It'd be so much easier if he were foaming at the mouth or drawing upside-down crosses on his forearm, but we had the kind of conversation you could have with someone standing next to you on line at a bank, or a coffee shop, except for the subjects we were discussing. That is so much creepier to me. He sat there and talked about the phases of his plan, about shooting a pregnant woman in the belly, as though it were a comment on the weather or last night's ball game." He took the phone away from his mouth to tell the driver to take the Fifty-Ninth Street bridge instead of the Triboro. "Where are you?"

"Home, doing background on the Rogan's farm thing."

"Stop. Close your laptop, and get in a cab. I've got a whole lot of pent-up energy to spend, and I want to spend it on you. On you," he repeated, just so the message was clear, and so that I understood what he meant by it was partly directional.

My feet dropped to the floor and started hunting for shoes before I'd even realized what they were up to. "Wait— my place is closer," I reminded him, and without missing a beat he told the driver to drop him off at my building.

A sweaty and exhausting Saturday night melted into a lazy and relaxed Sunday afternoon; we traded sections of the _Times_ and fine-tuned a piece on the thirtieth anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis. I remembered our night in D.C. and the fantasy I had about sharing a room with him, fighting over outlet plugs and eating Cobb salad. The reality was even better than the fantasy, because when I ordered a Cobb salad from the deli, he ordered the biggest, sloppiest burger and fries I'd ever seen, and we split them both down the middle, co-conspirators in roughage and saturated fat. I was in heaven.

Unwilling to let the weekend draw to a close with a separation, we worked our way back to his apartment so that he could get his things together for the start of the work week.

"We spend a lot of time with each other," I noted in what I hoped was a casual voice as I made myself comfortable in his living room. What was I trying to say? That after working twelve- or fourteen-hour days with him, I still hadn't had enough, and was praying like hell that he felt the same way?

"Yes, we do," he agreed, rubbing a small towel on his head to dry his hair. He dropped himself down on the couch next to where I was sitting, and put his bare feet up on the edge of his coffee table. "It doesn't feel like too much time to me. Are you trying to tell me you're sick of the sight of me?"

"Maybe," I smiled, because the thought of ever being sick of the sight of him was pretty ludicrous. It would have been like tiring of the view in the Louvre, or yawning at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

"Too bad. Close your eyes, then, and feel your way around with your hands."

When a ringing phone shocked us out of sleep at two in the morning, we both scrambled around in the dark for a moment, trying to figure out which phone was to blame for the rude interruption. "It's me," he grumbled, and I flopped back down against the pillows with a whimper, trying desperately to pretend that I was having a dream. He stumbled out of bed, talking as quietly as possible with the caller as he walked into the bathroom, his voice sleep-roughened and his attitude taciturn.

The conversation started in English, and then slid into Russian, which made me think that perhaps Tanya was having a bad night. The low rumble of his responses soothed me back into a doze, and I hovered just on the edge of consciousness while I waited for him to bring his warm body back to me.

Some minutes later, he returned to the bedroom, and he was speaking English once again. "So call the guy at the FSB. My ME visa's good through April, I think. Can we do Tbilisi instead? I don't have time to mess around with Moscow, and if they know it's me, there's no way I'm getting in. No, _now_. Lufthansa to Munich; I know they fly there from Heathrow. Jesus, Tanya, I have no idea. I'll just find him when we get there. Call Nasir, too. Get Irina out of the house; I don't trust them, and it's a pretty straight line from her to me. Okay, so, FSB, Tbilisi, Lufthansa, Nasir, and Irina. Call me back."

He ended the call as quietly as he began it, but I was wide awake at that point. "What?"

"Chechen separatists invaded the parliament in Grozny this morning. The place is rigged with explosives, and they've already executed four hostages. As bad as that is, it's about to get even worse, because when they figure out that the U.S. Ambassador to Russia showed up a half-hour before they did, all hell is going to break loose."

I sat up, blinking and trying to absorb the facts while I watched him turn on the light in his closet and start throwing things into a sturdy blue canvas duffle bag. "Do you know who's behind it?"

He shrugged, still tossing shirts and socks into the bag. "Maybe; I spent some quality time with the Chechen muj a few years ago. And if it's who I think it is, this won't stop until they bring Kadyrov down, or everyone in the place is dead. It's really that simple." Done with the closet, he jogged back to the bathroom and grabbed a toiletry kit, tossing that into the duffle as well before he stripped off his boxers and threw on a new pair, followed by jeans and a faded blue sweatshirt.

The light from the closet was limited, but harsh, filtering into the room like a scream through a thin wall. I counted my heartbeats, and was waiting for him when he finally made his way back to sit next to me on the bed. His palm covered my cheek.

"Bella, I have to.."

"Go," I finished for him, and the word felt like a ripcord.

# # #

A/N - Hi there, and thank you all so much for reading and reviewing and recommending this story. You're all wonderful; I don't deserve you, but I'm thrilled as hell to have you all the same. Spanglemaker9 pre-read this chapter, because she's the kind of generous friend who will drop whatever's going on in her life to be there when you need her. How lucky am I to know her? So lucky. littlesecret84 pre-read too, and if you don't know how wonderful she is already, you need to get on that, because I only mention it in every note. Ciaobella's busy doing fun things on vacation, but she's still awesome, too.

So, I started writing this story a year ago. Toward the close of the second chapter, I'd made a decision to have Edward face a crisis involving a hostage-taking in the Chechen parliament. If you roll back to Chapter 3, he mentions spending some time holed up in an apartment in the Chechens, which is where the seed for this plot point was planted. As some of you may be aware, Chechen separatists invaded the parliament building in Grozny last Tuesday, killing three people and injuring seventeen others before blowing themselves up. To say that I'm a little freaked out by the unexpected coincidence is putting it mildly, but after considering the matter, I've decided to go ahead and write it as it was originally planned. I want to make it VERY clear that I don't take the events of last week lightly, and that it's my hope to tell this story with the utmost respect for all parties involved in the real-world crisis. I want to extend my sympathy and apologies to the families who lost loved ones last week, and to remind anyone reading that this is a purely fictional story, even though it's now skirting uncomfortably close to reality.

"Je me lance vers la gloire" means "I launch/throw myself toward glory", and is a lyric from "Psycho Killer" by The Talking Heads.

ISABELLE was a real program at Brookhaven Lab. You can see why the existence of an ALICE and an ISABELLE in the universe of particle physics made it imperative for me to explore a plot featuring them in Twific, right? Right? Oh my God, I'm so alone.

I'm nominated for a Glosp Award ("Stories You Can't Live Without Anymore - The Ultimate Best"). There are golden penises on the award website. I'm not saying that it's vital to me that I win a golden penis, but I'm merely suggesting that this sounds like an infinitely useful sort of a prize. If you're moved to do so, please vote at glospawards - dot - blogspot - dot - com.

I'm also acting as con-crit beta on some wonderful new stories by new writers: please check out "Drift", by denverpopcorn, and "Divergence" by KristenLynn. I'm really excited about both of them, and urge you to take a peek!


	19. The Persian Flaw

A/N: Another STRONG disclaimer that **this is a work of fiction**. I use the names of real people and I use real settings for dramatic effect alone. I cannot state with too much emphasis that I have no intimate knowledge of anything related to the inner workings of either the Chechen or the Russian government or the detractors and supporters of the same, and urge the readers of this story to treat everything they see here as having been fabricated for the purposes of advancing an entirely fictional plot. I take no "side" in this argument as it exists in the real world, and cannot condemn any act of violence or terrorism strongly enough.

# # #

The Persian Flaw

"The State Department says it's two-hundred and eighty-seven," Emmett told me as he hung up the phone. "They can't be absolutely sure, because nobody can tell them how many janitors and other support personnel are in the place. We'll have to go with 'according to the State Department', even though he all but admitted that it was probably at least three-hundred."

I nodded and walked back out to the bullpen, which was heaving and roiling with activity, the waves of a dozen fractured conversations breaking against my eardrums and combining in a babel of noisy nerves. Edward and Tanya were still in the air somewhere, hurtling through the day into god-knew-what. For the millionth time in the past three hours, I cursed Peter's decision to send him, even as I acknowledged that he was the right person to go, given his background and contacts in that world.

"When are they landing?" Tyler asked, the twentieth person to put that question to me in the past hour or so.

"What am I, Lufthansa flight information?"

"Sorry," he offered, after a brief and loaded pause. I got a grip on myself and apologized, because none of this was Tyler's fault. None of this was anyone's fault, really, aside from the people dressed in black and strapped to bombs halfway across the globe. Given an unappetizing array of options, I chose to obsess over why Tanya had placed the call to Edward when the decision to send Edward into Grozny had been Peter's. There was something off about that sequence, and it bothered me. Lufthansa had deep-sixed its in-flight internet connection service, so there was no way to contact either Tanya or Edward, which meant that I had to shake down Peter for the truth, a task I was in no way eager to tackle.

I stood in the middle of the busy room, undecided about where my feet should take me next. Victor spotted me and promptly removed my options. "Bella, you get Secretary Clinton in thirty, and then the wife, if she's still willing to talk. Get down to the studio; we'll pretape and crash it to air the minute we get clearance from State."

"How the hell did we get a one-on-one with the Secretary? I thought she was doing a general briefing at noon."

He didn't answer me for a moment, and appeared to be choosing his words carefully. "They know Cullen has an 'in' with the muj, which they definitely don't have. Pretty sure they're going to ask him to take a message to whoever's in charge the minute he gets set up over there."

Fear crept like a gathering frost along my spine, and for the next few seconds, all my effort was concentrated on trying to drag air into and out of my lungs. "He's not—it's a _story_, Victor, not a diplomatic mission. Isn't it enough for them that he'll probably be the only Western reporter doing stand-ups in front of the Parliament?"

"Eleven Americans," Victor answered, his face impassive. "Eleven unarmed Americans in the middle of someone else's grudge match. Anything we can do to help, we're going to do. Not that we even have a choice, but yes, Bella: anything they want, and anything he'll agree to do, because they're fresh out of alternatives. And if you think he's just going to stand in front of the building, you don't really know him at all, which I highly doubt. Be downstairs in ten."

I tried to find that silent space in my mind where breaking hearts and quaking nerves couldn't trespass, but the space had vanished, packed into Edward's blue duffle bag along with his spare socks. 'Do your job,' I scolded myself. 'You can't do anything else, so just do the job.' Hadn't he made it clear that he would have to leave to chase a story? He was honest about it all along, and never hid the fact from me. This was as much a part of him as his beauty, or his ability to crawl under my skin and stage a coup against my insecurities. I'd been carefully, clearly warned, and I'd fallen in love with him anyway, so I couldn't blame him for being who he was. I could either choose to accept it or walk away from it, and there was no way in hell I was walking away from it. I had no idea how people who loved those who ran into burning buildings, into gunfire, into outer-space or racecars or danger of any kind for a living were supposed to bear it with any degree of comfort, but that was now my job, too. It suddenly occurred to me that my mother did this with my father on a daily basis, even if the likelihood of his being involved in anything dire was a slim one. Edward had stood next to me when anyone else would probably have either laughed or called me crazy for taking Alice's dreams so seriously. He'd stood next to me, and held my hand, and given me all the support I could ever have asked for. He'd taken the closed-off, uncertain Bella and transformed her into a woman who felt she might just deserve to be desired in her entirety. We were now where the rubber of the theoretical met the road of reality, and I knew that somewhere under his cucumber-cool, he was expecting me to wave him off. Well, no chance, NewsFox; I wasn't that girl, even though I wanted to scream and curse him for pulling me apart like so much roasted pork.

The interview with the Secretary was brief, but her conciliatory tone was troubling. Anything that rattled her to that extent made me pretty nervous, because God knew the woman had been through a thing or two. The ambassador's wife declined to appear on-camera, but offered me a short off-camera Q & A on the record, which I worked into the script for the piece with the Secretary. Alex, Emmett and I sat in the Avid closet and punched it all together with some graphics and b-roll on Chechnya for the geographically-impaired in our audience, then passed it over to Victor and Ben for the sign-off to get it on-air. I scurried back down to the studio, pulling on a suit jacket as I ran; somber news called for a certain formality. I couldn't even celebrate the fact that this little exclusive was going to make every other network sob into their cornflakes. I was happy for ABN, and happy for the show, but I would gladly have passed on the whole shebang for a chance to call the Ambassador yesterday and tell him to catch a cold or break a leg. If this story cost me Edward, the price was more than I was willing to pay.

Monday afternoon passed in a tense scramble for information and updates, but the Kremlin had locked down all access to Grozny and was only feeding TASS, RIA, and Interfax bare-bones data on the crisis. We stumbled into dead-end after dead-end looking for clues, but the lack of facts was hopeful in the sense that had something major gone down, word would have gotten out through back channels, so no news was good news in one sense at least.

"I miss him, too," Kathy said as she handed me an unsolicited cup of coffee. "I'll beat the crap out of him if he does something stupid. Don't ever tell him I said that, though." I couldn't even pretend to respond to that in any casual way, and she raised her eyebrows at me. "He'll be fine. He's one of _those_ guys, you know."

At five o'clock, my cell phone buzzed.

"Let me tell you something," Tanya's voice assaulted me without preamble. "I never travel with him like this again. Is like sitting on pin cushion. He is scared to talk to you. Please, Bella, for me, say something to him."

"I don't know what to say."

She tutted into the phone. "You don't think I know that? I know that. Tell him what you have for lunch. Tell him you are stealing all his pens. Tell him anything. I'm handing him this phone now."

Before I could tell her to wait a moment until I could gather my thoughts, Edward was breathing in my ear.

"Hey," he said, his raw voice turning the simple word into a host of doubts and discomfort.

"How was the flight? Where are you?"

"Fine, except for the fact that Tanya was sitting next to me. We're in Tbilisi, waiting for our ride to Grozny. It's, uh, a little more than 100 miles from here, but we'll have to take the scenic route to avoid any Imperial entanglements, and the roads are pretty bad."

"Did you have dinner?"

He laughed, easing some of the unbearable tension between us. "I can't believe you just asked me that. What's next: am I wearing a scarf? Yes, I had dinner, if you want to call some really suspicious offal stew dinner."

"Don't laugh at me. I don't know what I'm supposed to say to you," I snapped.

"I'm sorry. I hate that you're so worried. I hate that I'm the reason for it."

"Yeah, well." The words were grumpy, but I knew that he understood there was more fear than anger behind them.

"They don't have much in the way of souvenirs in Grozny, but if you like, I'll bring you a team Terek soccer jersey."

"Edward."

"I'm doing this, and then I'm coming back. Just watch me."

"You'd better," I choked, unable to maintain any toughness at the thought of an alternate ending.

"Hey now," he murmured. "None of that. You're acting like you've forgotten exactly how amazing I am at this stuff. Cut it out before you hurt my feelings."

He didn't need my doubts on top of his, and the very last thing I wanted to do was distract him from the task at hand. I struggled to find a lighter tone and managed a wobbly sketch of a laugh.

"Egomaniac. Just for that, I'm tempted to not tell you the very important thing I was going to tell you."

I thought I could maybe put him to work on the drive to Grozny, where his forced proximity to Tanya might uncover the reason why she'd been the one to place the call to him, but his reaction threw me.

"No. Don't you dare. I swear to God, not now. Not until I can see your face when you say it."

"What? Why?"

"Because I'm not saying it for the first time over the phone, and I'm definitely not saying it right before I walk into whatever the hell is happening in that Parliament building."

The momentary disconnect between his conversation and mine was suddenly and breathtakingly clear to me, and I literally had to press a hand to my chest to make sure that my heart didn't explode right out from under my skin.

My silence during the time it took for the whole world to rearrange itself in my brain did not go unnoticed by Edward. "Wait a minute. Back up. Was this an important thing that had nothing to do with anyone currently on this phone call?"

"Did you, um, just..."

"I did nothing. I said nothing. You didn't hear anything," his scattershot answer sprayed across the phone line. "Must have been an echo, or interference, or something. Yeah. So what's the important thing you're going to tell me now instead of asking me more annoying questions about what I haven't said?"

I sucked in as much air as I could, because even though I suddenly wanted nothing more than to have him hear the words from me, he was right. Saying them at that moment was on some level admitting he might not be coming back, and the smallest superstition about something like that was too much for me to wrestle with.

"Okay, fine. Tell me why Tanya was the one who called you about this at two in the morning when it was Peter's decision to send you. Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

I could practically hear him frown on the other end. "I hadn't given it much thought to be honest with you, but now that you mention it, yes, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Has Peter said anything?"

"Not a word. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?"

"Very much so. I'll work her on this end; see if you can get something out of him." There were voices in the background, and I knew his ride had arrived. "Okay, that's us. Listen to me: I'll try to call you when we get to Grozny, but I can't promise I'll be able to. Just trust me, all right? Can you do that?"

"I trust you; it's the people with the bombs I'm a little suspicious of."

"They're not looking to take me down. They _need_ me, because without me, what they're doing and what they want doesn't leave the room they're sitting in. "

"Please, be careful." They weren't the three little words in my heart, but they would have to do.

"Sweetheart, bullets bounce off me like raisins off an Oldsmobile. Piece of cake. Didi khania ar minakhikhar!" The last bit was clearly not directed at me, as his mouth left the receiver to address whoever was standing nearby. "I'm hanging up. Trust me, Bella. No matter what you see or hear from this point out, just trust me. I'll call as soon as I can."

My "goodbye" met three beeps, signaling the end of the connection.

The hostage situation settled into a kind of tense Mexican standoff over the next forty-eight hours, with the Russian Spetsnaz GRU and their genuinely frightening "Spetsgruppa A" counter-terrorism task force dropping into the city and compelling all the residents of the beleaguered metropolis to vanish behind their doors, just in case one of the military decided they looked too innocent to actually be innocent. The group of separatists that held the Parliament building were incredibly well-organized; this was an operation that had clearly been planned with meticulous care, as every possible point of access to the building had been considered and accounted for. It was airtight and unbreachable without the use of tanks or bombs, and I had to pause to appreciate the irony of the situation, because the government had essentially designed and built their own prison.

Edward fed reports back to us from secure locations, deftly keeping himself out of arm's reach of a very angry Kremlin. I watched grainy Skype footage of him as his five o'clock shadow turned into several days' growth of scruff, and the dark circles underneath his eyes deepened, bruising the pale skin on his face in an echo of the unrest around him. We hadn't spoken since Monday, and on one level, I was relieved about that. I let my brain trick me into believing that there were two Edwards: the one who was out there, neck-deep in danger; and the one who lived in my heart and made me whole. I kept the one in my heart safe from everyone and everything, and wished the one out there a quick and safe return so that he could be reunited with his twin. Daisy/Derek felt too big without him bouncing his restless legs next to me, and despite the fact that I'd done the broadcast solo many times before he arrived, the whole thing just felt hopelessly lopsided without him. Victor offered to let Tyler or Richard pinch-hit for Edward and join me at the desk, but it almost felt like cheating on him, so I declined, preferring to mark the lonely, sleepless time without him both on and off the air without substitutes of any kind. Work kept me focused. In an odd way, it felt as though we were still functioning as a team, as though he were throwing that stupid squishy ball of his toward me and I were catching it across thousands of miles.

Peter was a difficult man to track down; he'd been locked in meetings with various State Department personnel since the crisis began, and only visited the newsroom for brief snatches of time. He was clearly in no mood for interrogations beyond those being forced upon him by agents of the government, and it wasn't until Wednesday afternoon that I finally managed to grab some time with him.

"Got a sec?" I flagged him down as he was ushering yet another crisp blue uniform out of Edward's all-too-empty office, presumably to assure State that Edward harbored no evidence of double-dealing.

"Yeah, let me just—Major, can you show yourself out, or would you rather I join you?"

The major declined the escort, thanking him for his help and leaving our office suite in the direction of the elevator bank. Peter turned to me and patted his pockets, looking for his Blackberry.

"Sorry. Yes, Bella, you wanted to talk? I've got about ten minutes, and they're all yours if you can tell me that you've got something to eat in your office. I had to skip lunch again, and I'm starving."

"I've got string cheese and some rice crackers."

He shrugged. "It'll do. Let's go."

We settled in behind closed doors, Peter sinking into one of the chairs in front of my desk and grabbing the offered string cheese with an exhausted grunt of thanks. He chewed absently on the cheese while I unscrewed the cap from a bottle of water, stalling for time and knowing I had very little of it.

"So? What's up? You know I'm not keeping anything from you about Chechnya; I'd tell you if I knew anything more about where he is and what he's doing."

"I have a question for you, and I'm not sure how to ask it, so I'm just going to toss it out there. Why did Tanya make the call to Edward in the middle of the night if it was your decision to send him?"

Peter's eyes, which had been drifting without focus across the surface of my desk, suddenly locked onto my face. He didn't speak for a moment while he appeared to consider me, and then he exhaled. "It's really a pain in the ass to work with people who pay attention, you know that? I should have shot for the primetime programming side of things. Actors don't notice anything other than mirrors."

His aggravated tone made me smile. "I'd say I'm sorry, but it's kind of what you pay me so well to do."

"I know. And I've got nothing to hide, and no reason to hide it. She was with me; she's with me almost every night."

"Whoa." I wasn't sure what to say to that. It wasn't as though I had much moral high ground to stand on given the state of things between Edward and myself, but the fact that this had been quietly brewing around us while we'd been distracted by our own situation kind of took my breath away. Tanya was probably a widow; she was almost certainly a widow. I knew how broken she was by Oleg's disappearance, and while I'd always thought of Peter as a stand-up guy, if he was taking advantage of her vulnerability I'd have to fight Edward to tear him limb from limb.

Peter shook his head. "It's not like that. It's _not_ like _that_. At least, it's not like that for her." He threaded the string cheese wrapper through the fingers of his left hand. "She needed a friend, and so I'm her friend, and I make her terrible coffee, and we talk, and she gets the spare room. I'm her friend. Maybe someday she'll need me to be something else, but right now, that's what she needs. If she ever decides that she needs something else, we'd obviously have to figure out the work situation."

The sweet simplicity in the way he spoke made tears threaten the corners of my eyes. "Oh, Peter," I sighed. "You're one of the good guys. I'm sorry I went poking my nose into your business. It's just...I really like her, and I got a little curious."

He waved me off and stood up. "I get it, even though I'd really rather you pay attention to the kind of news that goes on the air. This is obviously not for public consumption, because I can see how people would get the wrong idea. Was that all? I have a thing upstairs with the network."

I nodded, but as he made his way to the door, another thought occurred to me. "Hey— I might have mentioned something about this to Edward. I'm only telling you because you know he's pretty protective of her, and he'll probably come at you with a question or two of his own once he knows what's going on."

"How about we concentrate on one catastrophe at a time, okay? I'll deal with him when he gets back here. When _they_ get back here."

"Right. Later." I couldn't help wondering if one day—today? tomorrow?—I'd end up like Tanya, sleeping in the guest bedroom of a man who wanted parts of me that had disappeared into a jungle.

I was in the middle of the broadcast on Thursday when an explosion of activity in the control room almost rocked me off my script, forcing me to talk through the excited voices buzzing into my earpiece in a kind of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" round-robin of noise. Ben cued the break and as soon as the cameras were cold, I unleashed my frustration.

"What the hell, guys? I'm trying to do a show, here. Can you take the circus outside?"

"Sorry, Bella. Uh, we're blowing out the back of the run; we've got fresh footage from Grozny that was cleared from upstairs. Looks like the first part is edited, but the last part is raw, so you'll need to talk around it. It's over, but there were heavy casualties. The ambassador and most of his staff got out before the military moved in."

"How can I talk around it if I don't know what the hell it's about?"

"Treat it like a live feed. We'll throw the Grozny map and some of the still images we've got up on the smart board, and you've got the names of the key players in Parliament on your desktop screen. We need the boilerplate disclaimer about disturbing images up front for the raw footage, because I don't know what's on there. Don't forget to lead with the warning, or network will kick me around for not indemnifying them. Let's cut the break and come back in sixty."

I nodded in the direction of the booth, but the blood was pounding so loudly in my ears that I had no idea whether or not Ben said anything after that. 'Disturbing images' meant only one thing within the context of this broadcast, and that was dead bodies. _'Please,'_ I prayed, feeling selfish and not caring that I was. Ben would have said something if Edward or Tanya were involved. He would have, surely.

I looked up to see Rose's elegant index finger pointed at me, and found that the camera was hot. Fresh out of freak-out time, I cleared my throat and stepped into the unknown with the rest of the viewing audience.

"We interrupt our broadcast for breaking news from Chechnya. The four-day standoff in the Parliament is over; US Ambassador John Beyrle has apparently survived the hostage crisis, and was evacuated along with the majority of his staff mere moments before Russian troops took the building. What you're about to see is footage just sent to us by my co-anchor, Edward Cullen, and his producer, Tanya Vasilyev, who are on the scene in Grozny. We'd like to warn our audience that some of the following footage is unedited and might contain graphic and disturbing images. Please exercise discretion when viewing."

The footage began playing on the screen behind me, taking the place of the station-generated "Crisis in Chechnya" graphic I was so tired of seeing every night. I closed my eyes as the tide of Edward's voice washed over me, pulling every bit of love and fear I had with it and carrying them back out there, toward him.

"The streets of Grozny are a metaphor for the larger state of things here. Strolling, if anyone can be said to 'stroll' in this city, down Putin Prospect, you encounter boutique after boutique, all filled with high-end luxury goods and well-dressed shopgirls. The beautiful new apartment complexes and lone luxury hotel replace the burned-out, bullet-riddled buildings that filled news broadcasts only a few years ago. Everywhere you look in this part of town, you're assaulted with deliberate signs that this isn't the Chechnya of those days. This is a new Chechnya: prosperous, safe, stable, and ready to welcome you and your tourist dollars with open arms. It is remarkable, and beautiful, and a testament to the drive of the dynamic young President Ramzan Kadyrov.

"But this Grozny is also a bit deceptive, in the way that the backlot at Universal Studios is deceptive. It hides a different city behind fresh paint and bright lights, a city still full of fear and distrust and danger, especially for those who speak out against the Russian-backed government of President Kadyrov. We've spent the past few days bringing you reports and updates on the situation not far from this beautiful street, but miles away from its intended facade: an area of the city known as 'Shanghai', where residents hide in makeshift plywood shacks and live with the daily threat of desperate repercussions if they attempt to tell a foreigner about _their_ Grozny.

"These people effectively sign their own death warrants by hiding us and giving us shelter. If their neighbors were to discover where we were and who was helping us, and didn't report it to the authorities, they would be equally guilty. As a result, we don't show you any faces, and we won't tell you any names. I spent six months among these people in 2006, and this is probably the only reason why I am not currently sitting in a prison, awaiting either judgment or deportation. The only camera we have is on a cell phone. The only connection we have to the world is via the internet, stealing access while we hide in parked cars in the better parts of town to upload these reports to you.

"In about twenty minutes, I'll be walking into the intersection between these two versions of Grozny, and sitting down inside the Parliament building to talk with the people who hold virtually every member of the government of Chechnya at gunpoint, along with eleven Americans who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. I can't tell you how I'll get there, and I can't tell you who will bring me. I can only tell you that this is a story they want to share, and they know that they don't have long to tell it."

I forced myself to look at the screen, even though a large part of me didn't want to see this. If these were the last moments of Edward's life, I wanted to be a witness, because they would also be the last moments of mine on some level.

"Motherfucking crazy-ass son of a bitch," I heard Emmett mutter from somewhere nearby. "The balls on him. No wonder he's got all that hardware in his closet."

The next image on the screen made me want to vomit. Edward was sitting in what looked like a generic sort of office space, sparsely furnished with a desk and several chairs. The surface of the desk was bare with the exception of a blank blotter, on which rested a large automatic rifle. Seated behind the desk and next to Edward was a man in a black balaclava and a black turtleneck sweater, the only visible bits of human about him being his hands and a pair of keen brown eyes. The camera phone shook slightly as it recorded the scene, and I could only assume that Tanya had taken a seat on the other side of the desk to continue filming. The lens shifted as she sat, capturing a thin black wire strung along the wall behind the two men. Bombs, then. Bombs and guns, and Edward sitting there so calmly, as though they were getting ready to dig into lunch and have a casual chit-chat.

The man didn't identify himself, and the talk was a fairly brief one, when all was said and done.

"Tell me why we're here," Edward said.

Through an off-camera interpreter, the man in the black mask answered him. "We are here because if a government exists for only some of Chechnya, then it serves none of Chechnya. We are here because we will fight until Moscow understands that we do not accept our status as an outpost of tyranny. We will fight for our independence and our sovereignty until we all fall, and then others will take our place. The man who sits at the head of our table is a puppet and a monster, and those who do his bidding are traitors."

"But your President was once one of you. He and his father both fought with the militants and the separatists."

The man in black nodded, and the interpreter continued to translate. "Yes. Yes, he was once one of us, until power seduced him, and now he serves nobody but his own interests and those of the Kremlin. He and the members of this Parliament only care about this country as much as it benefits them. He is not Chechen anymore."

"What purpose does it serve to hold everyone in this building hostage? There are innocent Americans and innocent Chechen citizens in this building. If you love your country and your people, how can you justify killing them? The President is not here."

"There are no innocents in this government. You think election reports from the newspapers in Moscow tell the truth? They lie. The citizens of Chechnya did not vote for this President or these members of the Parliament. They are here because the President has put them here, and they terrorize our people, and they steal our labor, and they lie to the world. If you disagree with them, you disappear."

"And so you answer violence with violence? Forgive me, but what will more killing solve?"

The man in black kept talking, but the translator paused for a moment before picking up the conversation. "If they cut out my tongue, how loud can I scream? I have no other voice here in my country. There is no other argument to make, because you cannot argue with a gun to your head." He patted the rifle on the desktop. "This is my voice now. It is the only language left to me, and the only language they understand."

Edward leaned forward into the man, and while the action wasn't threatening in the least, I stopped breathing, because while I saw a reporter's interest, the man in black might very well have seen something else. "You will not leave this building alive," Edward said, stating this as a fact. "How can you fight for a free Chechnya if you're dead?"

I couldn't see the man's mouth, but I was almost positive that he was smiling. "We do not expect to live," he answered. "We only expect to scream loud enough for the world to hear us before we die. Then someone else will carry on."

"And in exchange for the loudspeaker I'm giving you, what may I have in return? If you believe in freedom, may I have the Americans you are holding?"

Something about the way he was asking the question struck me as odd; there was no way that he would have gambled something so big on the spur of the moment. "It's a script," I whispered into my dead mic, as the realization dawned. "We're watching a play. They want to look reasonable, so they'll let the Americans go. Oh my God, this is probably killing him inside."

The man in black appeared to mull over the request before finally nodding. "They will leave when you leave, but America should know that the friend of my enemy is also my enemy. And you," he leaned in to Edward then, closing the small distance between them until they were virtually eye to eye," You are a pawn in many games. I cannot have respect for anyone who does not choose a side."

"That asshole," Emmett breathed again.

Edward stayed where he was for a moment, giving the man the full measure of his stare. "My job is to report without prejudice. You might not understand the value of that from where you sit, but truth is the only weapon I'm interested in holding, and no side has a monopoly on the truth. In order to see it, you need to stand in the middle. If you don't support that concept, you will never live in a true democracy." He relaxed back into his seat and slung one long, denim-covered leg over the other. "Is there anything else you'd like to say?"

The man stood and pushed himself away from the desk, unsnapping the pistol holder on his hip and causing every nerve in my body to arrest. " Miyarsh Noxchi Che," he said, and the translator offered "Long live free Chechnya!"

"Hintsa," he ordered, nodding to whoever else was in the room with him before turning to Edward and addressing him a final time, this time in halting English. "The true anthem of our nation. Dasha will say words for you." His singing voice was deeper than his talking voice, coloring the words with dark meaning:

_"We were born at night when the she-wolf whelped,  
In the morning, to lion's deafening roar, they named us  
There is no __god__ but __Allah_

_"In eagles' nests our mothers nursed us,  
To tame wild bulls our fathers taught us.  
__There is no god but Allah_

_"Our mothers raised us to dedicate ourselves to our __Nation__ and our Homeland,  
And if our nation needs us we're ready to fight the oppressive hand.  
There is no god but Allah_

_"We grew up free as eagles, princes of the mountains.  
There is no threshold from which we will shy away.  
There is no god but Allah_

_"Sooner will __cliffs of granite__ begin to melt like molten lead,  
Than any one of us shall lose our __honor__ in life's struggles.  
There is no god but Allah_

_"Sooner shall the __Earth__ be swallowed up by the broiling sun,  
Than we emerge from a trial in life without our honor!  
There is no god but Allah_

_"Never to bow our heads to anyone, we give our sacred pledge,  
To die or to live in freedom is our fate.  
There is no god but Allah."_

He repeated the last line a final time, then quickly raised his pistol to his head and shot himself. Tanya must have realized what he was about to do, because the cell phone camera pivoted away a second before we heard the pistol discharge.

"Jesus!" Ben shouted in my ear, and all of my nerves came back to life in a giant shiver. On the tape, there was suddenly lots of shoving and shouting, and the camera lens bounced aimlessly from floor to wall and back again. It was clear that Tanya was running, and I only exhaled when I saw one of Edward's shoes jog into view during a sweep of the floor.

The number of voices on the tape suddenly quadrupled as they hit the end of what must have been a hallway; I heard Edward snarl "Ambassador, haul ass", and gleaned that he'd encountered the captive diplomats. The bright light from the hallway was suddenly extinguished, and there was the clatter of feet thundering down a staircase. When they reached the bottom of the flight, several concussions from what must have been bombs detonating above them rocked the group into walls, prompting more shouting and chaos. The dim glow of florescent bulbs whizzed by them as they continued to jog, their uneven breaths and an occasional cry punctuating the rhythm of their feet.

Less than thirty seconds later, they threw open a door and emerged into the open air of an inky Caucasus night and an empty, yawning street. "Zdyes!" they began to shout, waving their arms as Tanya recalled her camera was still running, prompting her to retrain the lens on the liberated group. A drab-covered truck with an open back rumbled up to join them, and they clambered aboard in a reasonably orderly fashion, given the hysteria of the moment. Edward threw himself down on a bench next to the Ambassador, both of them breathing hard as the sound of heavy troop movement filled the air around them.

"Anybody missing?" The Ambassador conducted a quick headcount. "Eleven. Wait - where's Morozov?"

Nobody answered him, prompting Edward to ask who Morozov was. "He's the security attaché," a disheveled woman several seats down supplied.

"He was only Russian national in your party?" Tanya's voice was loudest, as it was closest to the phone mic. The woman nodded in the affirmative. "He's probably dead," Tanya concluded, and a sudden, stifling silence filled the back of the truck.

Edward broke the silence, getting back to business. "Let's wrap this up; these people have been through enough for one day." He asked the Ambassador a few brief questions about his time in the building, but didn't push for too many specifics. The final seconds of footage wound down as the truck bounded across several ruts, knocking its passengers together. A sharp turn indicated that the truck had left the main road and moved onto another artery.

"Battery is almost gone," Tanya informed him.

"Fine. Leave it. We'll upload whenever we get somewhere."

"Sign off," she hissed at him, prompting the first laugh I'd had in what felt like a decade.

"Really? Oh, all right, fine. On me: this is Edward Cullen, reporting to you from the back of a truck in the middle of nowhere. Now shut it down." He frowned at Tanya until she clicked the "off" button.

"Bella! You're up," Ben urged me to get with it, and I turned away from the screen to find that the camera was hot and in my face.

"Okay," I managed, trying to keep relieved laughter from giddying up what was definitely not a fluff piece. Pinching my lips together and begging the universe to give me three solid minutes of poise before I disintegrated into a pile of bones and hair and slightly compromised euphoria, I took another breath and started again, letting the updated information Ben was feeding me in the earpiece wash through my brain and out of my mouth.

"We are still awaiting final confirmation of the number of dead and injured in the wake of the explosions at the Parliament, but Russian news agencies are now reporting that the building has been retaken and the militants are either dead or in custody. More information to follow in our eleven p.m. broadcast. If you are watching us on the East Coast, we now join 'Entertainment Extra', already in progress. This is Isabella Swan in New York. Thank you, and good evening."

I forced myself to stay still as the abbreviated outro played, but the moment Rose killed the cameras, I shot out of my chair, stumbling away from the uncontrolled celebration in the studio and into the quiet space of the green room, where I closed the door on the whoops and high-fives of my colleagues and collapsed onto the couch in the corner.

It was too much to process, and my emotions were all over the road. Was I relieved? Sad? I felt everything at once, but the overriding thing, the thing that cut through all of the noise in my head, was that I could never, ever ask him to sacrifice this part of himself for me. He was too good at it, even under these orchestrated conditions. I realized that I could trust him, inasmuch as anyone mortal could be trusted. If he failed somewhere, if something went wrong, it would only be because whatever he faced was impossible to survive. I was too proud of him to ever let him be less than he was tonight.

And I loved him. I loved him so much that it should have frightened me. Instead, it filled me up and made me anxious to shower him with it, to wrap him in it and tell him how amazing he was to me, how miraculous I found him, how just knowing him had made me happier than I ever thought I could be, and that I'd take it for however long it was on offer.

I wanted to be on the phone with him that moment, just to hear his voice in my ear, for me this time instead of for the rest of the world. I had no idea where he was or what he was doing; despite my eagerness, I could wait, and some instinct told me that he was waiting, too. I would find a little more patience, and once he returned, I would lock the door on the universe and try to make him understand that "plan ahead" me didn't give a crap anymore. I wasn't tied to consequences now. I was only tied to whatever the hell it was he was doing to my heart.

Too keyed up to socialize and celebrate with the rest of the crew, I ducked out as quickly as possible and made my way home, where I sat on my couch in the dark and catalogued the revolution within. I must have fallen asleep sometime after midnight, because when the garbage trucks growled along the quiet avenue at five a.m., I found myself hunched over and cross-legged, still in my work clothes. It was longer than I'd slept all week.

A sleepy shower and change of attire later, I returned to the office and spent a good hour just staring out my window at the anemic morning sunshine.

"Bella, come on. Snap out of it."

I broke out of my reverie to find Kathy standing over me, holding a huge cup of coffee and something slightly muffinlike in her hands. "Hey, yeah, sorry. I'm here."

"Sure you are," she nodded as her lips curled around the sarcasm. "You've got planning in fifteen. Try to slug down some coffee and eat a few bites of this, or they'll just prop you up in a corner like a coat rack."

The morning planning meeting was more like the Yankees locker room after yet another World Series victory, until Ben and Victor finally threatened to put everyone on Presidential Turkey Pardon duty. Suitably chastised, the guys settled down and we mapped out a recap of the previous night's events, divvying up post-crisis interview assignments with various governmental agencies and Eurasian and Transcaucasian political policy experts. I let myself fall back into the job, and picked up threads of information wherever I found them to help tie together this story and offer the viewers as much as we could in the way of resolution. Fifty-six members of the Chechen government had perished in the explosions following the escape, and Russian troops flooded the secret tunnel right after Edward evacuated it. The troops took down the rest of the separatists, and were also suspected of mistakenly shooting one or two hostages, but that was a matter for them to sort out amongst themselves.

All around me, news just kept right on happening: austerity measures cut education funding; the President's trip to Asia; a dozen illegal Mexican immigrants caught in a flash flood while trying to cross the border; a new drug that might aid victims of spinal cord injuries. The world was spinning, and things were happening all over the place. For a change, things were also happening to me, and for me.

I was desperately trying to find some misplaced notes on my desk at four o'clock, because without those notes, Eric couldn't finish the background on the suspect in the Yale murder case. I had no idea how I'd even ended up with the notes; I wasn't working on the story, but Eric swore he'd given them to me, so I tore through everything in the neatish piles around me to see if they'd ended up under something else.

"You're supposed to be the organized one."

My hands stilled at the sound of his voice, and I looked up to see him standing in my doorway. He looked like he'd been dragged through a cornfield backwards under a full moon: his hair was completely insane, there was a full-on beard asserting its right to cover that face, and he was still wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing for that awful footage in Grozny. I had never seen anything more perfect, and all the breath left my body in a shaky little "hmmm" sound.

His eyebrows lifted warily, and I could see that he was just as unsure about what to do with this moment as I was. "You okay? I'm, ah, back. Well, obviously."

The expression on his face did me in, because he looked nervous, and even when he was sitting next to a homicidal, suicidal ideologue, he never, ever looked nervous. He was nervous about me, and about whether or not I'd reached the limit of my ability to cope with his lunatic lifestyle. I couldn't leave my chair or work my way around my desk fast enough. I just wanted to reach out and make sure that he was real.

"Easy," he warned as I approached him. "It's only fair to warn you that I probably smell like a goat. I haven't had a shower in...well, in longer than I should have gone without a shower. Tanya wouldn't even sit next to me on the flight home."

"I don't care. I don't care." I bridged the remaining distance between us and wrapped myself around him. His arms wound themselves across my back, and his hands were in my hair, and his beard was scratching my forehead in a way that should have been unpleasant, yet was the opposite of that.

I wasn't crying, but there was an odd sort of hiccup-sobbing that I couldn't seem to get a grip on, and his hand smoothed itself over the top of my head. "Sssh. It's okay. Come on, you can smell that I'm really here."

"Oh my God, you really do stink like a farm animal," I laughed when I'd gotten a good whiff of him and calmed down a little.

"International crises don't really afford participants access to regular hygiene. I did, however, chew on a whole pack of breath mints during the cab ride from the airport."

"How optimistic of you. Were you hoping I'd do something with that information?"

"Yes. Please do something with my information, and I'll do something with your information."

"Oh, hi," were the last words I spoke before my mouth found his, and it didn't matter whether we were tired, or he was smelly, or what the world outside my office door felt like doing at that particular moment. His grip on me was just shy of bruising, and my grip on him was no less fierce. Had I ever really debated walking away from this? I must have been out of my gourd.

"Now," he said, when we finally gave each other the chance to use our mouths for another purpose. "_Now_ we can say the thing I absolutely didn't even come close to saying when we were on the phone." The look on his face just slayed me. We were all hope and connection, beyond needing to actually say it because honestly, it was evident enough without words.

"Me too. A lot."

"Spectacular. This would probably be a really nice memory if I didn't reek. Let me just duck into a shower and change, or something, and then we can catch up. Et cetera. Dot, dot, dot."

We smiled at each other like idiots for a full minute before Kathy finally intervened. "Welcome back. Now get out and do something about the funk you're sporting before I have to call a fumigator up here to get it out of the drapes and the carpet."

"Was she this distraught the whole time I was gone?"

"You can't imagine," I grinned. "She brought all her Barry Manilow CDs in and played them on your stereo."

His nose wrinkled. "Well, that's just disgusting; now I need to fumigate my stereo. I'll be punishing her with AC/DC the minute the soap is out of my hair."

Edward was home. He came back to me.

# # #

A/N - Hi there, and thank you all so much for continuing to read and review and recommend this story. Please drop in and say hello — I love hearing from you.

Ciaobella27, littlesecret84, and spanglemaker9 read this before you did, because I irritated them into it. Aren't they awesome? Yes, they are. The goat reference in this chapter is for littlesecret. I hope you're proud of yourself, Ser.

Apologies to The Frantics and Mr. Canoehead for hijacking their raisins and their Oldsmobile.

_Didi khania ar minakhikhar! _"Long time, no see!" in Georgian.

_Hintsa _ "Now" in Chechen

_Zdyes _"Over here!" in Russian

"Persian Flaw" is a practice of weavers of Persian carpets. They deliberately mis-tie a few knots while weaving, because only God can make something perfect.

I do a ton of research. You know that. I need to credit Tanya Lokshina's article, "Rebuilt, Fearful, and (almost) Forgotten by the West", for OpenDemocracy, and George Fiefer's article, The Price of Progress", for Radio Free Europe, for setting the mood and providing precious background details.


	20. Counting Moments

# # #

Counting Moments

I was pretty sure that both Edward and I looked like drugstore junkies during the broadcast on Friday night, but nobody around us had the guts to call us on it. I only knew that for the first time in his tenure behind the desk, Edward was subjected to more than a light dusting of Charlotte's powder brush. Peter, near delirious with joy over the outcome of the crisis (and, presumably, Tanya's return), nevertheless maintained the decency to let Edward know that nobody was expecting him to take the desk so soon after his return, but Edward brushed him off and insisted he was more than ready to roll. We should have been somber. We should have delivered the wrap-up on Grozny with the ponderous gravity it deserved. Instead, we fought to keep our grins to ourselves, and during our extemp, when I was charged with the task of debriefing Edward about his time in the troubled country and all that he'd experienced and witnessed while he was there, I couldn't even look him in the eye for fear that what was happening between us would suddenly bump the more relevant story straight out of the camera frame.

"You two have been about thirty seconds away from embarrassing the hell out of me for the last half-hour," Ben wryly observed during the mid-show break. "Keep it together for another twenty-eight minutes, and then we'll all turn our backs on you when the little red lights go dark."

The mood in the studio mirrored the borderline-hysterical mood between Edward and myself. We all knew we were onto something unprecedented and magical, and the euphoria of the epic exclusive and what it meant for the show made everyone a little bit sillier than they should have been. If we didn't screw this up, ABN's reputation as _the_ source for news would be untouchable for the foreseeable future.

"This is actually kind of fun. I never get to see how what I do affects anyone." Edward tilted his head at me while we waited for the final stop set to wind down and spring us from the trap of the nation's gaze. "It's usually just file the piece, and move on to the next thing. This seems a bit ego gratifying. I probably shouldn't get off on it, but it's nice that people notice."

I tried really hard not to laugh at him, but failed miserably. "Oh, I think they notice. It's kind of hard not to notice that you sneaked into a locked-down country and liberated a dozen unarmed American diplomats from the hands of suicidal militants."

"Yes, it's true. I'm really quite amazing."

"You did smell pretty bad, though." I had nothing else to throw at him. It was weak, but it was all I had. And looking at him after he'd showered and shaved, the comment was even lamer than the lamest lame thing ever.

He lowered his brow at me and frowned, but his eyes were alive with sarcasm. "Nobody's perfect, Isabella. I get as close as I can, and then I call it a day."

Oh my God, I wanted to jump on him. I clasped my hands together on the top of the desk instead, silently commanding them to stay where they were. There was so much to celebrate, and I was so high from it all—from the relief of having him safely home, from the satisfaction of knowing that those Americans were out of harm's way, from the pride of having done my part of the job, from the thrill of what it all meant to the show—and most of all, from the absolute joy of loving and being loved by the right person. I knew that the rest of the world saw this dangerously handsome and preternaturally-skilled reporter, and I was painfully aware that there probably wasn't a female in our audience who wasn't at least somewhat tempted to sigh over his heroics, but while I saw and admired all of this, I also had my own very private reasons for the way my breath caught in my throat when I looked at him. He went out there for himself and for the world, but he came back for _me_, to me and nobody else. I did that to him; I gave him a reason to return. I made him nervous. My big trick, my secret black magic, was the fact that I understood him and refused to hold him down. It seemed kind of too simple in the end, and I couldn't help but wonder whether there was more I needed to do in order to make the whole thing worth his while.

"We're out. Get lost before you two melt the lenses," Rose laughed, and we didn't need a second opinion on the matter.

"I need a real bed. I might even use it to sleep a little bit, but I definitely need a bed. And you. And at some point, a meal that doesn't involve braised organ meat of any kind, because Jesus, a man's got limits."

"Okay," I nodded, charitably avoiding the whole organ meat issue. "Which bed?"

"I don't care. I just want to be in it an hour ago."

Twenty-three minutes later, we were mostly naked and tripping into his enormous boat of a bed, and the near-delirium had melted into something sweeter. "Oh, your skin," he sighed into my collarbone. "It's very nice." His hands ran all over me with no particular destination in mind, fingers and palms just sort of visiting whatever they encountered like happy little Christmas carolers slightly drunk on eggnog, leaving their song as a present. "I missed this, and this, and this, too," he said, kissing my shoulder, and my throat, and the space between my breasts. "I'd kiss your mind if I could, because I missed it most of all."

"I was really scared," I admitted, finally letting myself voice it now that he was back in my arms.

"I know. I'm sorry. It's so hard for me to know that who I am and what I do hurts you. I just don't know how to be anyone else." His exhaustion was like another body in the bed, and yet through it, his own fear was also visible. "Is it too much? Can you handle this?"

"Try and stop me." I pulled him even closer to me than he already was. He'd been through so much, and it was a struggle to regain perspective. "Wait. Are you hungry? Want me to get you dinner or something? You're so tired."

He regarded me with a lazy grin. "Are you taking care of me? That's cute, sweetheart. You need to knock it off, though. I'm pretty sure I'll speak up if I need anything. You're just as tired as I am, and you worked just as hard as I did even if you didn't have to pack a bag to do it."

"But you've got to be starving. I can order something in."

"Okay, really, ssssh now, or I'll be forced to ssssh you myself."

"I'll let you in on a little secret. I'm kind of hoping you will."

_Home_, his mouth said as it covered mine, not with the actual word, but with every other thing between two people. His mouth spoke this way for quite a while, telling me that it missed me, and apologizing for worrying me, and reminding me that he was only being who he was. The love we made was an extension of that, soft as bedsheets, warm and quiet and distracted by the realization that the most important connection we had going on wasn't the one between our hips, causing us to forget to move for whole minutes at a time while we just looked at each other and marveled. When he moved and I felt him against me and inside me, the slow ache of the lonely time apart from him healed, replaced by the shiny new skin of complete belonging. I would bear this mark gladly, because the pain of being without him for any length of time was absolutely nothing when compared to the joy of being with him, in this and in all ways.

Uncharacteristically, he was asleep moments later, his arms and his body sprawled around and half-over me as he finally surrendered to the need for rest. I'd never seen him so completely relaxed and vulnerable before, and the picture of him there — nose against my shoulder, slow, deep breaths punctuated by the occasional soft snore — just amazed me. I couldn't look away, and felt slightly guilty about the fact that I had this momentary advantage over him. He didn't need me to take care of him, but some long-buried instinct in me made me curl my arm around him and whisper to him that he was home, and safe, and cared for just the same. On some level, I was saying it for both our sakes.

I let him stay where he was for a little while before I dragged myself to the bathroom and then back to bed, where I re-insinuated myself under his deadweight arm, praying that it wouldn't cut off circulation to someplace vital while I slept. My last conscious thought before giving in to the seductive call of the sandman was that I had never felt so happy in my life.

The next time I opened my eyes, it was to the dull morning light, and I could hear him bashing around in the kitchen. The noise made me smile, even more so when I heard him drop something and apostrophize himself as an idiot, because he was the least idiotic idiot I'd ever met.

When I made it out of the bedroom to find him, I was greeted by the sight of him on one of the kitchen stools, his feet propped up against the half-wall, a mug of cereal in one hand and a large stick of beef jerky in the other, open laptop perched on the counter.

"Ah, breakfast of champions, I see," I laughed at him, and he swiveled around at the sound of my voice.

"I wanted bacon, but it takes too long, and jerky's almost as good." He pointed the jerky at me, a challenge in his bright, well-rested eyes. "Share?"

"Ick, no, thanks." I put the coffee on and then paced around the kitchen area, suddenly unsure what the heck I was supposed to be doing. My travels were interrupted when he stuck one long leg clear across the galley kitchen, forming a toll gate of sorts and stopping my forward motion.

"What's up? I think there's a gym on the twentieth floor of this building if you're not satisfied with the amount of calorie-burning we get up to."

I told the truth, because I was pretty sure that was the thing to do when you loved someone. "I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing now. I mean, you've got breakfast covered, so I can't help there. I could help you unpack and then find a metal garbage bin so we can incinerate your dirty clothes."

A crease formed on his forehead as he put his mug and his jerky down on the counter and tried to follow my illogical rambling. "Ugh, your wheels. It's too early in the day for them, and I'm too happy. Why the hell are you looking for a list of chores?"

"I have no idea," I confessed, feeling like the biggest dork ever born and totally frustrated. "I just thought I was supposed to be—I don't know, dammit—useful."

I jumped when I felt his other leg sweep in from behind me, trapping me between his strong thighs before his feet started retracting and pushing me closer to the rest of his body. "Wow. Okay. Uh, love means never having to be useful. I can't believe I'm about to say this, but could you possibly go back to just thinking too much instead of looking for things to do? It's really the lesser of two evils as far as I'm concerned. Photo finish in that horse race, though." His feet had finally managed to maneuver me up tight against his body, where his arms took over. "I guess I do have a few uses for you, if you're really dead-set on maximizing your productivity."

I had uses for him as well, but that wasn't really the point of the stupid conversation. "I've never been this before. I'm just trying to get it right. I want to be, you know, good at it." I wanted to be good for him, because he was so good for me, even when he wasn't trying to be.

And that made him laugh, really hard. A part of me was offended and embarrassed that he'd react that way, while another part of me was just happy to see him happy.

"You kill me. I swear to God, you kill me. Bella, I hate to break it to you, but you're not going to be graded on this. I think it's more of a 'pass/fail' situation." His hands worked under the t-shirt I'd tossed on, warm skin pressing against warm skin as his jaw found a spot against my neck. "I'm in New York, and I was anxious to get back here, just to get back to you and whatever the hell it is you do to me. That's never happened before. Your work is done. If you're looking for compensation, I'm pretty sure my mother would be willing to pay you for it."

"I'm not doing this for your mother."

"Jesus, I should hope not. But it's a nice fringe benefit that you're probably her hero, now."

"You have jerky breath," I murmured, because he did, even though I really didn't mind so much.

"I get it. My various odors over the past day have been suboptimal in terms of setting a mood."

"Mmmhmm. Your new nickname is Stinky."

"I'll take it. Anything's better than NewsFox." And then he kissed me, and I completely forgot about any objections I might have had, or any new constructions the love between us might have placed on my role in his life.

"I'm not Susie Homemaker," I whispered against his lips, just so we were very clear. "I think too much, and I eat pretzels for dinner, and I don't know how to make anything cozy. I send my laundry out."

"I know you do. I know you. I _know_ you, and I don't care about any of that stuff. I don't want your pot roast. I don't even _like_ pot roast, and anywhere you are is more than cozy enough for me. For a very clever girl, you can be pretty stupid sometimes."

The whole speech made me smile like a moron, so it was possible that he had a point about being stupid. "Gee, you're a smooth one. Why am I here again?"

"You're here because you love me," he grinned, and made a point of exhaling into my face as he did, so that I could reap the full benefit of his hideous meat breath.

"Well, you love me too, you said. Sort of."

"True enough, despite the obvious drawbacks. Ow, no pinching. So catch me up on everything that's been going on while I was out saving the world."

I pushed myself away from him so that I could grab two cups of coffee for us. "Tanya. Did you talk?"

He nodded, and the mood abruptly shifted from lighthearted to somber. "Briefly. She told me she and Peter have been spending time together."

This was a delicate subject, and I didn't want to broach what it might mean to him to see Tanya try to move on. "He said they just talk, and she sleeps in the guest room. He's not trying anything, even though he obviously would want to if things were...different. He's just being her friend."

"Friends are good. Everyone should have a few of them."

"Agreed. Want to talk about this?"

The furrow in his brow was back. "I don't think so. What else have you got?"

"Jake finally called me on Wednesday." That distracted him in a hurry, and I patted myself on the metaphorical back. "He managed to track down Castiglione. The guy is apparently a pancake short of a stack; wants me to call him at precisely 10:15 a.m. New York time next Tuesday. If I'm late by a minute, he won't pick up. I'm to use the US Naval Observatory's Master Clock in D.C. as a guide in this regard."

"That's...irritating," Edward decided. "Did Black give you any tips on how to handle this nutjob?"

"Ah, yes. Apparently, I need to get my geek on, Italian style. Arturo has a weakness for girls who can geek. And because I am a girl, he'll take the call now instead of next spring."

"I don't understand. And that's not something I find myself saying too often, so please explain why the delay would be necessary if you weren't a woman."

"Well, according to Arturo, the NIST in Boulder will be unveiling a new quantum-logic clock next spring, and that should be infinitely more accurate than the one currently in use by the USNO. Duh," I deadpanned, hoping to draw him even further away from thoughts about Oleg. "He's letting me slide."

"Nifty. Now all you have to do between today and Tuesday at 10:15 is become a world-class physicist."

I shook my head at him with mock pity. "You're slowing down; how sad. He's the head of the off-line project, which means there's one thing he loves even more than particle physics, and that's computers. I just so happen to be pretty good with those."

The scoff. It was mighty. "Don't tell me, let me guess: you know how to edit a PDF file."

"Yes, I do. But I also know my IDEs from my NICs. I can hang."

"All these acronyms are giving me a headache," he muttered. "Just tell me what the plan is."

"Arturo and I are going to interface, and see if we're compatible."

Hands found me again, and pulled me back toward him. "That sounds really dirty. As long as it's not actually dirty, I want to see you pull this off."

"What, the phone call, or the t-shirt?" Jerky breath or no, he was mine and I wanted him, and I wasn't afraid to let him know that anymore.

"Both. Equally." I got his best effort to help me out of the latter before he grabbed the box of cereal and stood up. "Provisions," he explained, and used the box to gesture toward the bedroom. "Grab the coffee mugs."

When Monday rolled around, it was right back to business. Again, that was the thing about the news: it got old, fast. A five-alarm fire on the campus of the University of Chicago that morning had everyone's attention, because it was perilously close to consuming the Frank Lloyd-Wright masterpiece, Robie House. The fire had apparently been set by a disgruntled former faculty member, who was foolish enough to announce his intentions on Facebook. A manhunt was underway, and there were rumors that he was armed and loose on the campus, looking to go out in a blaze of glory all his own.

"Go away," I seethed at whoever had just opened my office door. "I'm on hold for the head of the Robie House restoration project. If they disconnect me again, I will pull your lungs out through your nose just because you're here."

"God, you're cranky," Emmett said, completely ignoring my warning as he flopped down into the chair in front of my desk. "And you're wasting my time, because I got the wife of the suspect, and she'll do a remote."

I almost hung up in shock. "Get out."

"Fine, I'll give it to Cullen."

"Oh no you won't. I want her. When?"

"The affiliate crew's on their way to the house right now. Figure about twenty minutes."

"No, no, no, no, no!" I slammed the receiver back into place when I heard a dial tone take the place of the stupid "hold" music for the fifth time. "You'd think they'd want to tell the world how important the building is to the history of American architecture, but no, they'd rather run around and hang up on people."

"Take it easy, before you pop a blood vessel. Why are you so wound up?"

"I really hate the whole 'gunman on the loose' thing. I hate it. It always ends with a body, or two, or twenty, and it's so pointless."

"The world is full of pointless, sunshine," he observed, popping an Altoid into his mouth. "Hey, speaking of pointless, I might need to ask you something."

That put me instantly on my guard, because casual Emmett was never really all that casual. "I might answer you. Speak."

"Yeah. So...if, say, a one-night stand came back to you a year or two later for something more civilized, what would be the best approach on a thing like that?"

I lifted both my eyebrows at him. "Please tell me you didn't, Em. You did _not_ hello/goodbye Rose Hale. Were you drunk, or just crazy?"

"Not helpful in any way, Swan. If you can't answer the question, let's just drop it and head downstairs."

He stood up to leave, but I put my hand across the desk to stop him. "Hang on. How civilized are we talking, and just how big of an asshole were you?"

He shrugged. "Your average civilized—I'm not gonna serenade her under her balcony or anything, but maybe see where it goes? I was a cosmic anus. Come on, you know I go big with everything."

"Moron. If you're serious, you should probably start by apologizing. Apologize like you mean it; tell her she deserved far better than what you did to her, and then let her say whatever she's got to say. Don't, under any circumstances, ask her out right after you apologize. Give her some space before you roll the dice."

"Wait—am I apologizing for what happened that night, or for what didn't happen from that night until now? Because I really don't want to apologize for that night."

"Apologize for all of it, just in case," I sighed. "You're really something, you know that? There's probably not a man in this building who wouldn't kill for a chance to have her look twice at him, and you pull a boneheaded move like that? She's a decent person, Emmett."

Emmett started to reply, then shook his head and thought better of it. "Thanks for the advice. Let's get down there and get the wife."

As was generally the case in the loose-gunman scenario, the wife was completely shocked by it all, and maintained that he was a nice, quiet man who, prior to that morning, had never exhibited any sort of propensity toward violence. He did his respectable job and came home to a three-bedroom home in an average suburb, driving an average car with average skill. She had no idea where he might have gotten a gun, or that he even had a Facebook page, and I was struck again by how it was possible to live with someone for years, to share a bed and a last name and children and a life with someone, and yet really never know what they were capable of in their darkest moments.

And then I thought about Edward, and about how honest he'd tried to be with me. How he told me that he didn't know anything about anything when it came to what mattered most between two people, and that he'd probably screw it up, but that he'd give me his best effort anyway. I didn't realize it at the time, but what he'd said and what he'd given me in that moment was pretty rare and amazing. Granted, we'd had the opportunity to watch each other in some pretty extreme situations, as opposed to just seeing the safe and neat side of things, but all of that had just stripped away any chance at pretending to be something we weren't. I was possibly the luckiest person I knew.

I grabbed as much time as I could to really study the ALICE off-line project, sifting through obscure reports and calling Jake to pester him for any information he could give me on it from an insider's perspective. They were using a ROOT framework to gather and analyze data from the actual experiments, and even though much of what I was reading wasn't in an entirely foreign language to me, I found that I needed to take frequent breaks from it all to absorb the information. The capabilities of the framework were mind-boggling, and permitted Castiglione and his team to create graphic representations of events in the detector, along with incredibly detailed charts. I didn't understand the first thing about the data they'd collected, but the project itself was fascinating in that it allowed you to literally crawl inside each experiment using only the raw data as a guide. I crammed my head full of Object Oriented programming paradigms and C++ language, trying to get a lock on as much of the lingo as I could so that he'd be convinced of my genuine interest in his work.

"It's really fascinating stuff," I told Edward as we left the pre-show rundown. "You know, they've got these enormous machines doing these very delicate experiments, but without the computers, they'd see nothing and know nothing at all, because the events are all captured and analyzed using this program. They spend all those millions of dollars digging tunnels and whatnot, and it all boils down to something they need a kickass desktop to run and understand."

"How are you not unconscious right now? I sort of drifted off somewhere around 'events are captured and analyzed'," he joked. "You focus on the itty bitty desktop; I want to see what's going on with the huge cave of ultimate mysteries."

"if you want to understand the big picture, you need to start by looking at the pixels."

"Astute observation. If the news game ever loses its charm, you should definitely look into the greeting card industry."

"I got the pyromaniac's wife, and you didn't. Don't be such a sore loser, Stinky." I patted his cheek, and he grabbed my hand to give it a kiss before we headed over to be mic'ed and powdered.

The next morning, I was at my desk at ten, staring at the seconds ticking by on the USNO's Master Clock website while I tapped the screen of my cell phone and waited.

My door opened, and Edward poked his head inside. "Did I miss it? Please don't tell me I missed it. I made popcorn and everything. This is so exciting."

"Get in here and shut the door behind you," I admonished him. "I don't care if Kathy thinks we're making out."

He slipped through the crack and closed the door with a grin and a kick of his foot. "Good. I don't, either. In fact, how many minutes 'til liftoff? Might as well use our precisely-calibrated time wisely."

I glanced back at my screen. "We've got eleven minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Twenty-eight seconds. Twenty-seven."

"Plenty of time. Assume the position, but promise not to judge me on speed."

"Stop joking around. I'm nervous," I grimaced. "I hope to hell he doesn't really quiz me on anything completely obscure. I have so much crap about AliRoot floating around in my head right now."

He eased himself into the same chair Emmett occupied the previous day. "What is it with you and tests? I'm betting he'll be so thrilled that anyone's willing to listen to him talk about it that he just uses the whole time to wax on and on, and won't let you get a word in edgewise."

"I need him to trust me. I need him to like me. And I need him to help me figure out what's going on so that I can stop it and get on with my life."

He smiled at me, and I swore that if he just kept smiling at me in that particular way, I'd really never need anything else out of life. "He'll trust you. He'll like you. And if this were a video call, he'd hand over the keys to the joint with just one look at you."

"Okay, we're not going full monty, but I'm absolutely kissing your face off for at least three minutes and twenty-two seconds."

"Do I get to choose which three minutes and twenty-two seconds we're talking about? As much as it'd be nice to spend them right now, I think I might be better off putting them in the bank. Some days with you are bound to be pretty rainy."

I squeezed my eyes shut and put my head down on my desk. "Why are you torturing me? Why? I'm too tense for this. I need to focus."

"I'm sorry. I'll power down and do my best to make you want me a little less than you do right now."

He was relentless, and even though I knew he was doing it to distract me from my nerves, what had grown between us was still so new and astonishing to me that it really did threaten to throw me off my game. "Just sit there and behave yourself. How many cups of coffee did you have this morning, anyway? When we left the apartment, you were perfectly normal."

The knock on my door interrupted his response, and Peter strolled in. As fond as I was of him, there was absolutely no way I wanted to share any information at all about Alice's dream or the Switzerland investigation with him, because even though he was a truly decent and open-minded person, he was still my boss. Edward's eyes met mine, and I knew that he realized it was up to him to make Peter disappear for the length of my call with Arturo.

"Hello, people," Peter greet us, and his voice was somber. "For a change, I'm the one who's got some news to announce."

"Hey, Peter. Listen, can we do this in my office instead? Bella's about to hop on the phone with a contact, and I was just about to clear out and let her do her thing."

I tried not to look anxious while Peter assessed me. "Yeah, fine, let's go. It probably concerns you more than it concerns Bella, anyway."

Edward gestured that Peter should exit the room before he did, then turned and widened his eyes in a "wonder what that was about?" way. He tilted his chin at me and mouthed "good luck" before turning to follow Peter out the door and close it behind himself.

A little more than three minutes later, I was dialing the number Jake had given me, working my way through country codes until I heard the unfamiliar ring-back tone used by the Swiss to indicate that my call was going through. Two rings passed, and then someone picked up the line.

"Miss Swan, you are punctual," the voice said. It was a thin voice, devoid of any rich or engaging shades, precise and mathematical instead of warm and flexible, and bearing the faint hint of his Italian upbringing. I had my work cut out for me, and I hadn't even said anything.

"Signor Castiglione, thank you so much for agreeing to take my call. I realize that you're a very busy man."

"Yes," he agreed, not offering the conventional denials. "My colleague Mr. Black indicated that you have an academic interest in our program?"

It was time to get to work. "Oh, I'm sorry. He might have slightly misrepresented my intentions. Did he tell you that I'm a reporter for a television news network here in America?"

If possible, he instantly pokered up even further than he'd been when the conversation began. "No, he most certainly told me nothing of the kind. I am not in the habit of talking with reporters of any stripe, Miss Swan. Please allow me to direct you to our press relations office for more information."

"Wait—no! Please! I'm coming to you because I'm specifically interested in the off-line project, and there is absolutely nobody else on earth who has your depth of knowledge on the subject. We aired a story right before the latest soft test of the accelerator was done, and it left me with so many questions. Most of the reports deal only with the tunnels and the hardware, but I believe that the true meat of the experiment lies in the remarkable software you've developed for data analysis. AliRoot is the brain behind the flashy brawn, and its praises go unsung in the larger world. I'm so anxious to learn more about what you've created. If you like, we can absolutely speak off the record, and I will sign whatever release you'd like me to in order to guarantee that what you say to me won't be broadcast or disseminated in any way. You establish the parameters. I want to use my position here to set the record straight and let the world know that it's not the people in the hardhats who make the discoveries. It's the people who create the tools with which the data is analyzed who do."

He was extremely reluctant, but I kept betting on his vanity. I plied him with talk about UML and the innovative Subversion server they were using, alternately admiring him and then challenging him. He often left me in the weeds, but I somehow managed to spit enough nonsense at him that eventually, he was convinced of my sincere interest. The longer he talked, the looser he got, until I had him laughing at tech jokes. "ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI." I went there, and eventually, he followed me.

"I don't think I will be able to enlighten you with any degree of success unless we arrange a visit for you, Isabella. Will you come to Geneva? Will you let me show you the genesis of the new modality?"

"I would absolutely love to," I replied without hesitation and with what might have been borderline-inappropriate enthusiasm. "Tell me how soon I can visit you."

"I can make myself available to you for a tour on, ah, Thursday. The afternoon would be preferable."

"_This_ Thursday? As in, two days from now?" I'd wanted to do it soon, but sweet-talking Peter into giving me a day off when we'd only been on the air for a month seemed like a long shot on really short notice.

"Well, if you like, we can wait until the new year. I take my holiday during the entire month of December."

I permitted myself an internal grumble at the fact that European workers took the kind of vacation time that we in the States could only dream about taking if we ever hit the lottery, but since waiting until January was clearly out of the question, I quickly agreed to his first offer. He instructed me to phone his office back once I'd made my travel arrangements, and we agreed on a three p.m. rendezvous at CERN headquarters. Before we disconnected the call, I managed to slip in the possibility that I'd be bringing a colleague along, but that my colleague would function more as a supportive travel companion, and would happily sign any waivers or non-disclosure forms as well. The news didn't please him, but it also didn't cause him to rescind his offer. The notion of Edward being a supportive travel companion and nothing more almost made me snort into Arturo's ear.

"Whew," I breathed when the call was finally behind me, and slumped back into my chair, shaking the tension out of my arms. Edward hadn't returned from wherever he'd gone off to with Peter, so I struck out of my office to see if I could find him and celebrate my victory, and to figure out how I was going to ditch work on Thursday, and to figure out how I was going to swing a last-minute ticket to Geneva.

"Ooooh, I don't know if you want to go in there," Kathy warned me as I crossed the main reception area. "He's liked a caged tiger. Any minute now, he'll be blasting some of his godawful music."

"What'd I miss?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "No clue. Peter left about five minutes ago. I'm taking an early lunch." With that, she rerouted our calls to the backup line and grabbed her jacket. "Call me if his head explodes. I'll squeeze in a manicure while they're mopping up in here."

One perfunctory knock later, I opened the door to his office to find him pacing around and muttering into his cell phone. He looked up and acknowledged me, but kept right on muttering. I realized he was speaking Russian again, but suspected that it was someone other than Tanya on the other end, as she was somewhere in the office and he'd just have yelled until she came running. Gone was the hyper, teasing mood he'd earlier exhibited in my office. In its place was something far darker.

He ended the call less than a minute after I arrived, taking a deep breath and tossing his phone onto his desk. "Sorry. How'd it go with the crazy clock guy?"

"Fine. We're in. Now what's going on with you?"

"Moscow's decided to pull every single visa from every single employee of ABN. They're shutting us out of Russia; it's their little 'screw you' for the stunt in Grozny." Every word he said with on fire with anger and indignation.

"What? They can't do that!"

"Sure they can. They just did."

I shook my head in disbelief. "But you were there on what amounted to a diplomatic mission! That wasn't even a real interview. You weren't 'reporting' anything; you just did what the man with the gun told you to do!"

"Yeah, well, they're pissed off all the same, and the State Department can't do a damned thing about it without causing massive issues all over the place. They need to make an example out of me for chatting with a separatist, and they're taking down the whole network while they're at it."

"That's just bullshit. I'm sorry, Edward. Talk to me."

He rounded his desk and threw himself into his chair with a grunt, scrubbing his face with his hands. "I'm just happy we got Tanya's sister out of the country before this all went down. I mean, I knew they'd be unpleasant about it, because they really kind of have to be. I don't blame them. I understand where it's coming from, but that doesn't make me any happier about it. Shit!" His fist banged on the top of his desk.

The two relationships we shared with each other collided in my heart. The outraged colleague in me wanted to spend the next ten minutes abusing the Russian government at the top of my voice and cursing about how unfair it all was, while the woman who loved the man in front of her wanted to comfort him and convince him that given the situation with the hostages, he could only do exactly what he'd done.

Uncertain as to which part of me he needed most in that moment, I approached his chair, but didn't touch him. "What do you need from me right now? Just tell me, and it's yours. You want me to yell about this, I'll yell. You want those three minutes and twenty-two seconds of kissing, you've got 'em. Anything. Anything at all. I'll do anything. You're the best reporter and the best man I've ever known. This is stupid and unfair, but the world is a stupid, unfair place. You did the right thing, and now you're being punished for it."

His hand reached out for mine, and I grabbed it, but he didn't say anything for a moment, and I let the silence sit between us while he worked out whatever he needed to in his head.

"Thank you," he finally said, his voice quiet and devoid of its earlier tension. "I'm not used to needing anything from anyone. And I can't lie: it rankles that I kind of enjoy it when you want to take care of me. But what I seriously love is that you don't shove anything at me. It's perfect. You're perfect. I'll take whatever you're giving."

"You've got it all," I smiled at him, and leaned down to give him a kiss. "I'll even buy you lunch."

"Tell me what happened with the guy at CERN," he answered, pulling my hand until the rest of my body followed, and settling me into his lap. "I'm so ticked that I missed the whole thing. Did you dazzle him with your acronyms?"

"I think so. Yeah, I pretty much did. He wants me to go to Geneva to meet with him. The thing is that he wants me to do this on Thursday, and short of faking a horrible illness I have no idea how I'm going to get out of work."

Edward chuckled, causing the side of my body to bounce gently against his chest. "You're hilarious. You check the Congressional calendar, but not the calendar everyone else uses. This Thursday is Thanksgiving. Richard's got the desk."

"Really? Fabulous. I'll check flights for tomorrow night and book a ticket. I hope I can find something reasonable."

This time he laughed out loud, really bouncing me around in a very obnoxious way. "Okay, first of all, have you even looked at your paycheck lately? You're rich now. And secondly, we're booking two tickets."

"You'd really be willing to go, too? I told Castiglione I might be bringing a colleague along, who would act as a 'supportive travel companion'. I'm apparently an amazing liar."

"Oh, I'm absolutely going. It's one of the five or six countries on the planet that'll still let me walk through the front door," he answered, his laughter easing slightly while he took a deep breath, exhaled, and scratched his forehead. "Man, my mother's going to be furious that we're missing Thanksgiving, though; I'll let my father break the news to her. I'm pretty sure she's in the process of killing the fatted calf and covering it in cranberry sauce."

"Were you going to invite me, or were you just going to kidnap me and toss me into the middle of your family dynamic without so much as a warning?" I couldn't help feeling that I'd dodged a bullet, even though part of me was ridiculously thrilled at the idea that he'd just assumed my attendance.

"I'd have told you in the car on the way over there, I swear it. As soon as I made sure the doors were locked and there was no escape for you."

"You're scaring me. Is your mother going to hate me or something? Your father's always been very nice to me."

He crushed me against him, roughly kissing the top of my head. "I told you, you're her hero. She'd probably try to barricade the door and keep you there forever. But when I go, you come with me."

# # #

A/N - Hi there, and Happy New Year! Thank you, as always, for all of the fantastic reviews and recs and favoritings; you people say the nicest things to me, and it's honestly my pleasure to put this out here for you. I occasionally get reviews telling me that folks aren't sure what they should say to me. I swear to you that I'm really very normal. I do laundry, and get the oil changed in my car, and spend my day dealing with the irritating minutiae of a modern life. I'm thrilled whenever you take the time to let me know you're reading along, and whatever words you choose to use are more than fine with me!

Ciaobella27 and littlesecret84 pre-read this before it gets to you. They're the best Christmas gifts ever, even though I didn't actually unwrap them. Special thanks also to DeeDreamer for the "This-Should-Be-Published Fic" honors in the RAoR 2010 wrap-up!

Think the banning of an entire television network from a country could never happen? Tell that to ABC News. Russian president Putin revoked all visas and kicked them out of the country in 2005 following an interview they aired with a Chechen separatist. Once again, please note that real-world events inspire some of what you see in this story, but nothing in this story is directly based on any actual event.

Feel free to ignore all of the acronyms in this chapter. They're all real, as is the ALICE off-line project. The NIST in Boulder unveiled the quantum logic clock in the spring of 2010. It is thirty-seven times more accurate than the most precise clock that came before it, but Friday will still be too far away from Monday no matter how hard these geniuses work to change things.

Next stop, Geneva...


	21. ALICE In Switzerland II

# # #

ALICE. In Switzerland.

Edward spent most of Wednesday morning yelling to make sure that Kathy had her fill of him before the holiday weekend, a fact that did very little to support my need for focus and preparation. Barely two hours after the day began, Kathy had resorted to wearing her Bose noise-cancelling headphones, which she'd simply plugged into the phone, and at that point I realized it fell to me to figure out a way to bring his decibel level down to a manageable roar.

Paul came unwittingly to my rescue when he barged in to ask Edward's advice about which potato-based vodka was the smoothest. It was an odd question, but further explanation revealed that there were plans afoot in the bullpen to develop and consume a Thanksgiving meal based purely on alcohol, with Wild Turkey as the main course, potato vodka, cranberry wine, and pumpkin ale as sides, and, most bizarrely, a jar of kosher dill pickles one of them found tucked away in the office kitchen. Popular opinion held that the vinegar in the brine was close enough to alcohol to qualify, and the added bonus of including something green and vaguely vegetable in nature made everyone feel as though cooking had taken place. There was talk of buying a rum cake as well, which would serve as both a representative stuffing and a potential dessert option, in case anyone was still conscious and up for that.

The timely distraction and subsequent debate allowed me to organize all of my notes and the dozens of files I'd built on all things CERN and AliRoot, which I dummy-labeled and encrypted on my laptop in the event that I'd gotten my paws on something that would make anyone doing a cursory search there nervous. A little healthy paranoia had always served me well.

The boys in the pen might have been bored to tears, but I was far from it. In addition to the prep work for Geneva, I was juggling three stories and trying to work out sit-downs for a piece on new prosthetic legs for soldiers who'd suffered devastating injuries in Iraq.

"Well, I don't think we need to travel anywhere to watch people die a horrible death," Edward informed me when he dropped by my office shortly before lunchtime. "If they really go through with this, we should put a call in to Roosevelt Hospital's ER and have them on standby with extra stomach pumps."

"Even smart men have the stupidest conversations ever when they're bored. Why this went from idle speculation to being an actual thing with them, I'll never understand."

His face was sad as he regarded me. "How can you not get it? It's like Mount Everest for them now. They need to do it, because it's there. See, this is why men always find the cool stuff; we're compelled to go out and look for it. If Christina Columbus had been the captain of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, she'd have made it as far as Barcelona and then been distracted by nice shoes. Women aren't natural explorers."

"We're not natural morons, either."

"Point taken," he conceded, ever fair. " Are you packed? I'll bet you're packed."

"Of course I'm packed. Well, except for what I need from here. Are you packed?"

"I'm always packed, Isabella. Wow, that was unworthy of me. Forget I said it. All that quality time with Paul appears to have undermined my ability to throw heat — I'm momentarily sans zing. Let me just go back outside and start a fight with what's-her-name, for the exercise."

"Leave Kathy alone. Finish up whatever you're working on so we can get out of here and make it to the airport on time."

He was gone with a wink, closing my door and leaving me to finish dotting my "i"s and crossing my "t"s. I let myself be swallowed up by the job once more, desperate to get everything to bed so that I could leave it alone for a few days, and reminding myself that this was why I never took vacations unless they were forced on me. No matter what I left behind me when I walked away from my desk, it had a habit of hitching a ride in my head and making it impossible for me to relax and forget for more than a few hours at a time. The effort of trying to let it all go was pointless as a result, and I just found it easier to stay where I was. If Alice's happiness weren't riding on this trip to Switzerland, I wouldn't even have considered making the journey.

I worked straight through lunch, and only looked up when there was a tentative knock on my door. "Make it fast," I warned whoever was on the other side, covering the mouthpiece of my phone so as not to confuse the helpful secretary in Colonel Pasquina's office at Walter Reed.

The door opened, and the beautiful face that poked its way into my office almost made me drop the receiver.

"Uh, hi," I mumbled gracelessly, before I recalled that I was still on the line with the secretary. "Maria, you've been fantastic. Thank you so much for everything; do you think he can call me back on Monday? Great. You, too. Have a terrific holiday. Thanks. Yeah." And with that vague, rushed close, I ended the phone call, putting the receiver somewhere in the vicinity of the base of the phone as I took a breath and looked up again to greet my visitor in a hopefully more poised fashion.

"I'm sorry," she apologized, a slight crease forming between her flawless tawny eyebrows. "Your secretary was away from her desk, and I thought maybe I'd just...but you're obviously very busy. I just wanted to say hello, finally." Her words were apologetic, but her expression left no doubt that she wasn't the least bit sorry about risking whatever she needed to risk in order to see my face up close.

"No, hi, of course. Please come in. It's very nice to meet you."

The door opened wider as she slipped into my office, and I peered hopefully behind her to see whether or not Edward would be joining us, but he was infuriatingly nowhere to be found.

"Oh, crap," I whispered, not knowing what to say next, or how to say it. Her eyes twinkled and she fought to keep her mouth from forming a sympathetic grin.

"Yes, 'oh, crap' indeed," she repeated, still battling a smile. "I know I've seen you before, but I don't think we've ever actually been introduced. I understand you prefer 'Bella', is that right?" I could only nod in response, like the bobbing block of wood I'd apparently morphed into the moment she walked through the door.

"Perfect. Bella it is, then. And please, call me Esme." She settled herself into the much-used chair in front of my desk, crossing her legs and putting her purse on the floor next to her but still clutching a white paper bag with the fingers of her right hand.

"Is...does Edward know you're here?" If he'd known and left me all alone to face this, he'd be paying, and paying dearly.

She shrugged; on her, the action looked elegant. "I thought I'd come find you first. I love my son, but he can be a little slow to cough up interesting details. I'm hoping that's not a reporter thing," she said, shooting me a look heavy with significance. "In any event, since my husband tells me we're no longer having the Thanksgiving meal I've been carefully preparing for the better part of the past week, I thought I'd bring over a few turkey sandwiches. This way, I can at least tell my friends that I had a holiday meal with you. They don't have to know the awkward particulars." She offered me the bag, and my rumbling stomach thanked her in ways my hogtied mouth had yet to figure out how to do.

"So, Bella...care to tell me what's going on? All I've managed to get out of Edward is that the gossip columns weren't making up the fact that you two kissed over dinner at Alto. I don't want to pry—unless, of course, you don't mind if I do—but I'm naturally a bit curious now, because he hasn't brought a girl over for dinner since his sophomore year in college, and it was pretty obvious what that situation was all about." And then she snorted, and there was nothing even remotely elegant or ladylike in the action. It was in that moment I realized I could really love her.

"Uhm, I'm not really sure I should be—," I started to say, but Edward's sudden appearance in the doorway made me swallow the rest of the deflection.

"Hello, mother," he greeted her, his Seinfeldian voice so full of sarcasm that I was amazed the words didn't dent the carpet as they exited his mouth. "How nice of you to drop by and snoop around behind my back."

"Don't be so dramatic. I'm snooping right in front of you," she grinned, then stood briefly to give him a kiss on his cheek.

Edward and his eyebrows addressed me. "Feel free to completely ignore her. You have my enthusiastic support. And you," he said, turning back to his mother. "How long were you skulking in the hallway, waiting for Kathy to leave her post?"

"Almost twenty minutes. I was about to call Leslie in Victor's office to work out a reason for her to go up there," she answered without hesitation.

"You have no shame. It's something I usually thank you for passing along to me, but in this particular case, it's inconvenient."

I cleared my throat and shot for the distant moon. "I'd love to continue this conversation, but I really do have some work I need to finish here. Do the two of you maybe want to go have a nice mother-son catch-up? I'm so sorry - I need to finish this before we leave today."

"Nice try. Polite. Thoughtful. Completely ineffective." She was really smiling now, half-apology, half-mischief, a powerful echo of the man she raised.

Edward sat down next to her with a huff. "Fine, we'll give you five minutes, and I'll even cut to the chase just to spare us all the agony of your kid-glove inquisition. Is there a sandwich in the bag for me too, or did you only come prepared for one victim?"

I passed him the extra sandwich while I watched the two of them exchange a complicated series of eyerolls and headshakes.

"Ready? Yes. About a month ago. We're not sure, but we'll let you know. Dinner, out, when we get back. That's classified. That's also classified. No, you can't, and very much so."

I only hoped that the series of answers he'd given her matched up with the series of questions I assumed she would ask if given the chance to. She seemed satisfied enough. My sense of things was that she was every bit as casually dangerous as her son could ever be, and that I'd be wise to watch my step around her.

"Do I want to hear the other side of that exchange, or should I just go along with it?"

"Depends," he smiled at me. "Have you had a complete personality transplant at any point today? If your answer is no, just go along with it."

Esme Cullen sighed and rose from the chair. "You are an unhelpful person, Edward. Next Wednesday, then. Le Bernadin, so your father can have his escolar and say hello to Eric. Seven-thirty, and please, please don't be late." She extended her warm right hand across my desk, and I grasped it with my own. "Whatever it is you're doing? As far as I'm concerned it's right up there with fishes and loaves. I'd give you my firstborn, but I'm pretty sure you've already got him."

"I'll walk you out, so I can tell you all about how unhappy I am with your end run. Say goodbye to the nice lady you won't be bothering again without previous warning, Mom."

She completely ignored him and continued to hold onto my hand. "It was the greatest possible pleasure, Bella. I'll see you next week. I have a feeling you and I are going to get along very, very well. In fact, I'm going to make sure we do." Her eyes, a more muted color than her son's but no less perceptive and penetrating, met mine, and in them she showed me all the joy and hope and gratitude she wouldn't express in front of him.

Esme walked out ahead of her son, who turned toward me and waved his hands in front of his face as a sort of "you didn't see anything" disapparation gesture, making me laugh and exhale with relief.

It wasn't until we were settled into our first-class seats on SwissAir 47 that I broke and asked for just a hint about what it was he'd confirmed to his mother.

"Just give me one. The last one, maybe. What was 'very much so' all about?"

He reached across the blonde wood partition to grab my hand. "She wondered whether it was serious, and it is. Very much so." My arm bent at an awkward angle as he raised my hand to kiss my palm, and I realized that he could have broken my arm clean off in that moment and I wouldn't have cared a bit.

"Serious?"

"Seriously serious," he confirmed, his eyes telegraphing the fact that he didn't consider the moment to be a good one to get into anything really heavy. "I'm thinking of giving you the password for my iTunes account."

I kissed his hand in return, my heart full of what hadn't been said, but what was already known all the same. "Whoa, baby steps. And if I haven't said it yet, thank you for being on this plane with me."

"Are you kidding? Mystery and potential danger on foreign soil? It's like you knew just what to get me for Christmas." He shifted in his seat and grumbled. "First class sucks. You're too far away."

While it did suck that he was separated from me by an assortment of partitions and screens, it was also amazing, and I finally understood why the tickets in that part of the plane cost thousands of dollars. I dozed off some time after the dinner of pan-fried fillet of John Dory served on actual china and chased with a Toblerone trio, only waking up briefly when Edward reached over the partition to turn off my reading light and tell me that I should recline the seat into the full flat bed. I might not have been fond of getting away from it all, but there was no denying that getting away in high style made it infinitely more pleasant.

Brilliant winter sunshine blinded us as we made the short journey from the airport to Geneva via taxi, passing through the clean, crisp streets of the pretty mountain city before we arrived at the Hotel D'Angelterre on the Right Bank of Lake Geneva. The Jet d'Eau sprayed chilly water five hundred feet into the air for our visual entertainment, but we were far more interested in speeding through the check-in process and heading up to the room to shower and change for our trip back out to CERN.

I wrinkled my nose when Edward stepped out of the bathroom. "Is that the same shirt you were wearing in Grozny? "

He nodded. "I did have it washed, you know. I love this shirt. It's my lucky shirt."

Battling the urge to roll my eyes at him, I tucked several bits of paper with details about everything Alice could remember from the dream and some maps of the lab into the inside pocket of my blazer, gave some notes a final, frantic glance, then grabbed my cell phone and stuck it in my shoulder bag, where it joined an assortment of Euros and my passport. "Are you ready? If we leave now, we'll still have some time to poke around like tourists before we need to meet up with Castiglione."

"I'm good." He shrugged on a rumpled olive-drab canvas jacket, patted his pocket to make sure his passport was there, and popped his aviator shades on his face. "God, you're so tense. Loosen up. This is the fun part. Let's go save the world." Grabbing my hand, he pulled me out of the hotel room and down to the lobby, where the helpful doorman flagged down a taxi for us.

The CERN compound was enormous, a huge wooden globe-shaped structure greeting visitors to the place like the Orb of the Unknowable. The taxi dropped us off at Building 33, and we shuffled along with the rest of the curious tourists, picking up literature before we made our way back outside and across the Rue Meyrin to the Globe, where we wandered through the eerie "Universe of Particles" exhibit.

"This is thoroughly boring," Edward murmured, standing behind me while we waited our turn to view the screen at the next portion of the exhibit. "Danger factor zero. Let's find the clock guy and get to work."

We abandoned the Globe and made our way back to the reception center, where I asked the well-dressed man behind the cherrywood desk if he would ring Castiglione's office for me. Edward walked around the circumference of the vaguely-Aztecan inlaid floor art. "Is it meant to be a planet? Is it a particle? Is it a sign to the aliens that this is where they need to land? What?" he was muttering, and I begged him to take his energy down a notch or twenty, because I needed him to look completely disinterested.

The man behind the desk called us over to issue visitor's badges and yellow hardhats, and we were made to surrender my bag, any cell phones we were carrying, and our passports. I was seriously pissed off about that, but Edward merely shrugged and tossed his passport and phone at the guard, who then added insult to injury by wanding us to ensure that we weren't carrying anything suspicious or dangerous. "I imagine we're not going on the standard visitor's tour. It makes sense that they'd want to keep things confidential. Cheer up—we get party hats." He rapped his knuckles on the top of my hardhat, earning himself an elbow in the ribs.

"You need to look bored. Pretend that the conversation is the least interesting thing in the world."

"Consider it done, because I'm sure it will actually be the least interesting thing in the world." The left corner of his mouth lifted slightly. "You look amazing in that hat. We should absolutely steal it when we're through here."

"The hat turns you on?"

"Yes, the hat turns me on."

"Hmm." I was forced to laugh at him then, and it served to loosen me up a little bit. His hand came up to rest on my shoulder, and he shook it lightly, a reminder to me to chill out.

"Ms. Swan?"

Our nonsense was interrupted by a frail young man in a white lab coat. His sparse beard was unkempt, making him look like a Deadhead grad student, but his steel-gray eyes were deep and sharp. I nodded at him and held out my hand, which he took briefly into his own before dropping it and moving back a pace.

"I'm Felix, of Dr. Castiglione's team. If you and your guest will follow me, I'll drive you over to 3293. It's where the offline project lives."

"Oh," I said, surprised. "It's a nice day. I'm okay with walking." My father's voice automatically entered my brain whenever a stranger offered to drive me anywhere.

Felix showed me his teeth, but it would have been unfair to call the expression a smile. "It's some kilometres from here, actually. It's also in France, on the other side of the border. Let me assure you that driving is the best way to reach the building."

I glanced at Edward, whose whole face was saying "why the hell not?", so I nodded and we followed Felix out to his ancient navy-blue Peugeot. A momentary and entirely silent debate about which one of us would sit in the front seat of the car followed, after which Edward folded himself into the economical space in the back while I rode shotgun next to the hippie genius.

"Won't we need our passports if we're crossing the border?" I asked him as we pulled onto Meyrin.

His eyes found me a little too quickly before they returned to the task of scanning the road. "It won't be a problem. The Schengen agreement eliminates the need to show your passport when you cross the border."

"Road trip. Excellent," Edward chimed in, doing his best to look like an idiot. Under different circumstances, I'd have laughed at him, but the realization that we were about to cross into another country without our passports was more than a little unsettling.

The small guard station bore the flags of the nations it straddled, and the agent of the Douane who manned the post merely waved us through after Felix showed him a small green card, which he then replaced in the frayed visor over the driver's seat.

Building 3293 sat in the middle of a nondescript collection of squat office buildings and what looked to be light-industry warehouses. The only indication that we were entering a secure facility was the barbed-wire fence surrounding the compound and the guard at the gate. Felix parked the Peugeot and led us to the building's entrance; it was unlocked, and we simply strolled right in.

The offices themselves were disappointingly shabby, and nothing about them screamed "scientific innovation". People of every sort and description drifted up and down the dimly-lit hallways, all apparently focused on whatever task they had at hand. Felix was clearly a man of few words, as he hadn't said a thing to either one of us since his dismissal of my passport concerns. Although I was tempted to ascribe his silence to geeky shyness, he seemed rather to be anxious to be rid of the burden of bringing us to his boss.

We finally halted in front of a door that was slightly ajar. Felix pushed it open and gestured to us that we should precede him, so I went through and Edward followed me.

The man behind the meticulous desk was unexpected in an entirely different way from Jacob Black. I'd read whatever background I could find on him before we left New York, but there wasn't much beyond a brief biography on the CERN website and a list of the manifold awards and degrees he'd received; he was an acknowledged pioneer in his field, and any reference to him invariably included some mention of his visionary management of ALICE's data collection, which was unlike anything anyone had ever before attempted. His genius was intimidating, and I was grateful that I didn't know too much about him before our phone call, because I might not have even tried to get over with some lame tech jokes.

It was difficult to pinpoint his age, but jet-black muttonchop sideburns crawled along his jawline, and his hair (what there was of it) was slicked back with some sort of oily pomade. He wore coke-bottle glasses and was painfully thin, but dressed in a black lurex shirt and the tightest black slacks I'd ever seen in a professional environment. A dark green tattoo peered out over the top of his wide, sharp collar, and a single dark teardrop of a jewel swung from his left earlobe. He wouldn't have looked out of place at a dive bar in the East Village, which didn't disturb me in the slightest, but there was something about the air he wrapped around himself that set me instantly on my guard.

"Aaaah, Isabella. What a pleasure," he murmured as he stood to greet us. Felix evaporated from the room, closing the door behind him.

"Doctor Castiglione. Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice," I replied, trying not to flinch as I stuck my hand out to meet the paper-thin skin of his cold, white fingers.

"Oh, please, call me Aro. We are friends, after all, aren't we?"

We weren't, but he didn't need to know that. "Of course. Aro. And my friends call me Bella. Speaking of friends, this is Edward, my colleague."

"Hey," Edward said, offering him his hand. "I'm Edward. Nice digs. So, this is where the magic happens?"

Aro's eyebrow arched in irritation. "We're scientists, not wizards. I'm not sure what you mean."

"Ignore me. It's a stupid American expression. Science isn't really my gig; I'm just here for the fondue and the meatballs."

"Meatballs are a Swedish thing, Edward. Sweden, not Switzerland."

"Ah," he nodded, and judging by his behavior, I'd certainly have thought he was as dumb as a shoe. "Okay. Sweden. I get them mixed up. The cheese thing is real though, right? I'll just shut up now and let you people do what you do."

"Are you a reporter as well, Mr., erm, Edward?"

Edward shrugged. "Yeah, but I'm new to the broadcast game. Bella here took pity on me, because she knows I don't get out much."

His infinitesimal curiosity in Edward apparently satisfied, Aro turned back to me, shrewd eyes calculating the measure of my involvement with my colleague. Our meatball exchange made it look as though I found him stupid, and while the outside of me was focused on moving forward with our meeting, the inside of me was applauding the neatness with which Edward made himself look harmless and made us look platonic in a few simple sentences.

"Well then, let's begin. We can start with the server, if you'd like. Follow me." And with that, he turned his back to Edward and completely ignored him for the rest of the tour. Lightly grasping me under my left elbow, he steered me out the door, launching into an explanation of Aliroot that left me scrambling to respond appropriately.

Every moment I spent in Aro's company only served to further convince me that there was something not quite right about him. He was punching the glass that covered my instinct meter, and a covert glance at Edward let me know that he was equally disturbed by the man. It was nothing in particular about him; rather, it was sort of...everything, from the way he moved his hands to the way he moved his mouth. He frequently smiled at me, but the smile hinted at motives beyond merely introducing me to his programming prowess.

"How many engineers are on staff to analyze the data you're collecting?"

We'd left the server facility and crossed over to the ALICE control room, a replica of the far larger LHC control room elsewhere on the CERN campus.

"Oh, Isabella," Aro sighed. "There is far too much data for the staff on hand to process. I've designed a protocol to disseminate data in individual packets to laboratories around the world. Everyone gets a little bit to work on, so that we're not charged with the task of doing it all ourselves. Many hands make light work."

"Oh, okay. And then the project heads at ALICE get the analyzed packets back so they can coordinate it and reach their conclusions?"

He tilted his head at me. "Well, yes, but only after it's passed under my review. I wouldn't want them to waste their time chasing someone's shoddy work, most especially when they haven't bothered to familiarize themselves with the protocol."

And that sent up a huge red flag for me; in essence, everything that ALICE was doing depended solely on how the man next to me interpreted it. Hundreds of people working with billions of dollars' worth of equipment, and in the end, Aro controlled it all, because information was the balance of power in any enterprise this large and complicated. Lord Acton's quote about absolute power corrupting absolutely echoed through my brain while I watched Aro fiddle with a set of keys, trying to fit one after another into the lock of the door in front of us. He kept everyone in the dark by feeding them only a portion of the picture. That had to mean something.

"Pezzo di merda," he swore under his breath, then turned back to me. "My apologies; the state of our art as it relates to the actual structure of this place is abysmal. Will you excuse me? I need to call maintenance. If you'll wait here for me, I should be back in a few moments."

"Of course," I responded, then waited until he'd disappeared down the end of the corridor before turning toward Edward, who whistled softly through his teeth.

"Whoa. Goosebumps, and not in a good way. He's like Dr. No's creepy goth brother."

"I know. Alarm bells all over the place," I agreed, then growled in frustration. "I wish we knew what the hell we were looking for. Whatever it is, I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find out he's in the middle of it, or knows something about whoever is."

"As much as I hate to say this, I think we need to split up. You stay here with him; I'll make myself scarce and see what I can find."

"You know even less about this stuff than I do. What good would it do for you to stumble around in the dark like that? You don't know where you're going, and you don't have any way to get where you want to go, anyway."

"Well, you've got several excellent points, there," he admitted, unbuttoning his frayed button-down collar. "But we're here, and it's not exactly around the corner from where we live, so we might as well have a good look around." His fingers fished around under the shirt collar for a moment, then reemerged with several small, white objects. "Plastic lock picks," he explained with a grin. "They never check the shirt collars."

"Ah, that explains the luck involved in this lucky shirt," I grinned back. "Wait — take these, since I have a guide." I handed him the map printouts I'd shoved into my pocket when we were in the hotel room.

"Brilliant. Are you going to be okay here? I'm not crazy about leaving you with Captain Creepy."

"Please. Piece of cake."

His eyebrows drew together. "Keep him talking, and stay out of dark corners. If he so much as puts one creepy finger anywhere near you, I'm going to make him cry really, really hard."

"I can take him. Get out of here before he comes back. Meet me in front of his office in two hours. Failsafe is the Peugeot, but we'd have to hotwire it and figure out how to get back across the border. Let's hope it doesn't come down to that. I can't believe I just said that—I sound completely insane."

"You should know that you saying things like that while wearing that hat is really doing it for me. I'm off to steal someone's badge and make a few friends. Be good."

"You too. See if you can find anything about how the data packets are managed. It's the only thing I can think of. Maybe he's taking point and that's how he's communicating with whoever wants to start trouble."

He nodded once, then took off in the opposite direction from the one Aro had taken. Breathing deeply to calm my nerves, I tried to sort through everything about Castiglione that set my teeth on edge. He was too slick to be guileless, and his involvement with ALICE was anything but peripheral. Everything he said was harmless and dull enough, but there was something...

I sounded like a conspiracy theorist. The rational side of my brain was throwing me some major attitude about putting so much stock in a half-assed dream. What if what Alice had really seen was only a power outage? She said everything just went dark. There were no bodies, no blood and no proof of death in her dream. Jake assured me time and time again that nothing they were doing would result in a major or catastrophic event. Would a little black hole or a random strangelet cause the whole earth to disappear? Was it even likely that either a black hole or a strangelet would develop in the first place? Nobody with the slightest bit of real scientific background seemed to think so. If ALICE the experiment wasn't likely to cause destruction, that left either force majeure in the form of an earthquake or other natural disaster, or a catastrophe designed and executed by man.

Albert Einstein once said that the next world war would be fought with stones. Assuming Einstein knew what he was talking about, there was every likelihood that I was placing too much reliance on the threat of the unknown. Big, scary physics events might not be the problem at all, and I didn't know enough about them anyway to stop them from destroying the world if that's what they wanted to do. I refocused my efforts on studying the pixels, hoping against hope that they would lead me to the bigger picture.

When he rejoined me several minutes later, Aro's expression was thunderous, but he quickly smoothed it away and adopted a more civilized expression. "Isabella, my apologies. The incompetents—they surround me, but I've managed to secure what should be a working key for this door. Please, let's continue." He looked past me in some hopeful confusion. "But where is your friend?"

I smiled. "He said something about finding a restroom, but I'm pretty sure that what he really wanted to find was the blonde who strolled past us while we were waiting for you to return. Should I try to track him down before we move on?"

He moved to stand even closer to me. "Oh, not at all. We wouldn't want to spoil his sport, would we? This is obviously quite tedious for a man of his, ah, intellectual bent." His spider hand found my elbow again, and he opened the door in front of us to guide me through.

"Your system is designed with such elegance. I'm curious: is it the possibility of scientific advancement that motivates you to innovate, or is it creation for the sake of creation, in the same way that an artist feels the need to fill a blank canvas?"

"You understand, and there are not many who do," he murmured, his voice much too close to my ear for comfort. "The science is attractive, but so much of it is beyond my ability to control." He patted a server stack with his free hand. "This...this I can control. This answers to me, and serves me. I have one petaFLOP at my command. There are one hundred thousand processors in more than a hundred facilities around the world, all taking the tasks I hand them and returning to me the information I need."

"The information the project needs," I corrected him, and tried to keep any trace of censure out of my tone.

His basilisk eyes shifted to study me all the same. "Yes, of course. The information the program needs. I'm fortunate to be involved in such an exciting project. I only hope to contribute whatever I can to ensure a successful outcome."

"You're far too modest. We can speak freely here, you and I. Without your ability to analyze the data, nothing would ever be discovered."

"I could feign modesty, but it's absolutely true," he laughed. "Tell me, Isabella, what are your interests beyond this? In what ways do you occupy your charming self when you are not traveling across oceans to humor dabblers in these dry arts?"

We were standing in an aisle of server stacks, in plain view of several engineers on the opposite side of the large room; I felt reasonably safe as long as they were in my sights. "Oh, nothing very interesting, I'm afraid. I'm devoted to my work, much like you—although as a general rule, I limit the stories I cover to things occurring in the States. What sorts of hobbies would people like us have time for?"

He tilted his head slightly in mock consideration. "Oh, there must always be time for other things. It's the only way to liberate the mind and send it off to conquer new territories. I indulge myself with a variety of...pastimes."

The way he said it left no doubt that he was referring to something involving significantly less clothing than we were currently wearing, and I schooled myself not to shiver at the thought.

"What does your family make of your devotion to your work?"

I forced out a light laugh, knowing full well what our new agenda was, and tried to prepare myself with a reasonable answer that wouldn't completely shut him down or make him hostile. "Oh, you know. I answer to no one but myself. I'm married to my job."

"Perhaps we can convince you to have an affair, then, and cheat on your passion for your occupation. After all, all work and no play makes beautiful women age before their time."

"You're very kind. It's a pity I'm not based here in Geneva; clearly, this is where the most intelligent men on earth have chosen to gather. It's grossly unfair of you all not to spread yourselves a bit thinner around the globe."

"Isabella, we live in the twenty-first century. Geography is no longer destiny. I have...friends in several countries. It's remarkable what one can accomplish when one is properly motivated."

The look in his eyes was a curious one: it wasn't precisely lecherous, but more acquisitive. Aro was apparently a collector of all sorts, and it didn't necessarily matter whether he was collecting data, or people, or power. He just wanted to have it all. In that moment, I felt less like a woman and more like a souvenir spoon or a stamp in a book. I was a way for him to say "Yes, I have one of those from New York." The realization took some of the pressure off of me, because it wasn't precisely personal with him, which meant that I could play the game from a more removed perspective.

"I'm afraid that technology hasn't quite replaced the real thing in that department," I smiled. "But I have every faith that you'll eventually manage to create a reasonable facsimile. It's at least as important as working out what happened when the universe began, although I can see how the wording on the grant proposal would be trickier."

His laugh was soft and more than slightly oily. "And I can see that you stand in need of some tutelage on this subject. Will you join me for dinner this evening? Let me help you navigate the nightlife of this village. It can be surprisingly sophisticated, if one only knows where to look."

The answer I gave him was noncommittal in the extreme, and his smile let me know that he was far from done with the topic. We wandered on, little innuendos sprinkled delicately throughout our conversation; he took me on a tour of the larger control room, which housed stations for each of the experiments being run on the LHC. Dozens of people swarmed the three circular bays in the room, all staring at computer monitors and large screens showing images of what I assumed were various points along the collider tunnel. I'd read about how large this experiment was, but seeing it first-hand, the size and scope were just overwhelming to me. You could have fit the Brookhaven project into the smallest corner of this operation, and still have had acres of space left over. Science had always struck me as so hypothetical; it was a field of speculation, where academicians debated with one another until someone fell asleep or marks on a chalkboard yielded a definitive answer. Standing there in the belly of the physics beast made me realize that science was a dirty, grimy bloodsport, and that there were things going on that were enormous and slightly dangerous and the opposite of theoretical. All of this was occurring right under the nose of the jaded world, the citizens of which were barely paying any attention whatsoever to the potential of these experiments to change everything they currently accepted as true and real and immutable. If medieval Europe was rocked by the discovery that the world wasn't flat, what would modern Earth make of the discovery that antimatter surrounded them, or that there was proof of other life on distant planets, or that God could be found in the Higgs boson?

Our tour took us through virtually all of the ALICE complex; Aro didn't offer to take me down to the LHC tunnels, and given the vibe he was throwing my way, I couldn't help but be grateful for that. I tentatively agreed to dinner just to keep him happy, but knew that there was no way in hell I'd actually make the date, because even if I weren't completely capable of worming my way out of it, there was no way in hell Edward would let that cozy little tête–à–tête take place without a whole lot of disruptive shenanigans.

Despite my fears that we'd have to jack the Peugeot and make a run for the border, in the end, our getaway was surprisingly peaceful. When Aro and I made our way back to his office, we found Edward lounging against the wall adjacent to the office door, with his hands in his pockets and a thoroughly bored look on his face.

"About time," he huffed at me, but his eyes were asking me whether everything was all right. "It sucks that you don't have your phone on you—I had no way to find you guys, and when I made it back to where we were waiting, you were gone."

"Hey, don't chase random skirts down random hallways, and we won't be forced to walk on without you."

"Married. Waste of time. Are we wrapping up, or is there more touring to be done?"

"I think I've shown Isabella everything I can show her. Here, at any rate." Aro's didn't bother to hide his disdain for Edward, turning to me again and grasping one of my hands in both of his. "My dear, I will call you in an hour or so to confirm our plans for this evening. I very much look forward to continuing our conversation about hobbies."

He raised my hand to his lips, and where Edward's assault on that hand had completely obliterated my senses, this one only served to heighten my distrust of this man and his various motives. He might have been a genius, but every instinct I possessed warned me that Aro Castiglione was up to no good, nowhere.

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A/N - Hi there! Thank you again, as always, for reading and reviewing and recommending this story, and my sincere apologies for the delay on this update; it's been a stupid month.

Littlesecret84 and ciaobella27 read this for me before you do. They're just wonderful.

While you wait for me to get my butt in gear, you should spend time with these two stories: "The Red Eye" by badjujube is an adorable tale of adorable vamp Edward, who is a private detective trying to figure out why the heck he's so interested in young Bella Swan. Did I mention it's adorable? Because it is. The European vampires wear clogs. Also, whatsmynom is making me smile a lot with her "Once More, with Feeling": Bella and Edward, ex-partners in a paranormal investigative unit, are reunited to figure out why people are falling in love in Forks. It's hilarious and quirky and original.


	22. Deus Ex Scientia

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Deus Ex Scientia

Edward managed to maintain his façade for the ride back to the welcome center. Every few seconds, Felix would look up to the rearview mirror in an apparent attempt to reassure himself that the man in the back seat was no more than he seemed to be, and while I couldn't very well turn around to check him out myself, the random innocuous chatter Edward was spinning out appeared to be holding without a breach.

Once he'd dropped us back at Building 33, Felix beat a hasty retreat, his shifty eyes already refocused on the road back to the ALICE compound. Edward and I stood motionless in front of the door to the welcome center until the Peugeot sputtered out of sight, and then he grabbed my left bicep and pulled me over to the side.

"Tell me that sleazy asshole didn't touch you. And tell me fast, because while I'm trying to respect your ability to take care of yourself, the way he looked at you makes me want to get a little animal on something." His jaw muscles flexed in time with the fingers wrapped around my arm as he worked to get his anger under some kind of control.

My hand found his chest. "I'm fine, I swear it. He never got the chance, because we were always in plain sight of someone. Where did you go, and what did you find out?"

"Your Mr. Castiglione is a nasty piece of work. They're all more than a little afraid of him, but he's Wyle E. Coyote, Super Genius, and the program is so thrilled to have him that nobody's brave enough to question what he's doing. You know why all the analyzed data is filtered through him? It's not because nobody bothered to learn the protocol, as he claimed. It's because the only way he'd take the job was if they gave him complete control so that he could tweak and refine the system. There were three other candidates to design the thing, but once he threw his hat into the ring, all of them bowed out almost immediately."

"Who the hell _is_ this guy?"

"I don't know, but we're not leaving until we find out. How are the hairs on the back of your neck doing?"

"Yeah, they're all standing on end. Yours?"

"Same." His hand moved from my arm to the base of my spine, and he turned me toward the building entrance. "Come on. Let's get our stuff and find a shady spot to chat about it."

We grabbed our things from the security desk and took a taxi back into Geneva, both relieved to be putting some distance between ourselves and the enigmatic Dr. Castiglione. A quick interrogation of the driver led us to Boréal, where we grabbed a table in the back and slugged down some coffee.

"So, what've we got? He's very smart. He's a control freak—wait, scratch that. He's just a freak, period. He's got this project in a choke hold, and it doesn't look like there's anyone or anything standing between him and the results of these experiments."

Deep in thought, Edward absently spun his coffee cup in circles. "I think the key question we need to ask ourselves is why? Why would he want that kind of control?"

I added another packet of sugar to my already-too-sweet drink. "It doesn't make a lot of sense. It's just data. Jake said he's paranoid and a conspiracy theorist. Maybe he wants to keep it all to himself so nobody has the chance to monkey around with the results?"

"Maybe."

"Or?"

He looked up at me and smiled. "Was my 'or' that loud?"

"At this point in the game, I hear what you don't say almost as well as I hear what you actually say."

The lips I loved to have anywhere near me for any reason whatsoever drew together for a moment before he spoke again. "Well, here's hoping you're going to be as unhappy to hear what I'm actually going to say next as I am to actually be saying it. I think you need to keep that dinner date with him tonight."

"What?"

Edward grabbed my hand. "I get it. Believe me, I get it. But it's an opportunity to see him again in a public place, and the more we know about his motives, the easier it'll be to determine whether or not he's the man we're looking for."

"Ick. Just the thought of—I mean, ick," I shivered, because the prospect of spending more time in that man's company was incredibly unpleasant on every level., but Edward was right and I knew it. "Fine, I'll go, but he's not going to give up anything useful. He's far too smart to risk exposure."

His grip tightened. "I don't know. You'd be amazed at how stupid a man can be when he wants something from a woman. He'll give up just about anything to get her."

And suddenly, we were talking about two different things, and I couldn't have cared less about the creepy genius in black. If it were anyone other than Edward, I could have chalked this up to pure coincidence with no deeper meaning. But this was Edward, and the man never said what he didn't mean to say.

I covered his hand with my free one. "It's a good thing I don't hang around with really stupid men, then." I couldn't help smiling at his serious expression, and at what he wasn't saying. "It would kill me to turn a smart man so permanently stupid, because there are already too few of the smart ones to go around. Temporary insanity is about as much as I'd be willing to have on my conscience."

He tugged gently on my hand until my body followed and my face was close to his. "Let me go on the record by saying that I'm officially certifiable about you."

"See if you can get yourself committed at Greymore. I already know how to work my way around that joint."

"Perfect. Jesus, you're just perfect," he said before his mouth landed on mine, and we ignored the fact that once again, we were making out in an eatery. A bare moment before I gave up the struggle to stay in my seat instead of joining Edward in his, I heard a throat clearing from somewhere above our heads.

"Cullen? That you?"

"Tell me you said that," he muttered against my lips. "It would really suck if you did, but it would suck even more if there's another person here right now."

"Sorry. Wasn't me. I remember who I'm kissing."

He sighed and looked behind me, his face obviously registering recognition. "Stosh?"

"Hey! I thought that was you! How's it going? Man, I haven't seen you since the thing in Athens." A huge hand appeared over my left shoulder, and Edward shook it as he half-stood to greet the obnoxious intruder. "You covering the World Health Organization thing tomorrow too? Seems a little tame for you."

"Uh, sure. Yeah, of course. Of course I am," Edward replied, clearly unable to tell the newcomer that we were here to chase the shadows of a nightmare down the corridors of CERN. "I thought you were in the Paris bureau now. Bella, meet Stanislaw Jaworski, the scourge of the wire's European operations. Stosh, this is Bella. Try to act like you know what manners are."

Willing the inevitable blush at having been caught mid-mash by a total stranger from my cheeks , I turned my head to greet the pot-bellied ,comb-over spectacle behind me. Stosh didn't wait for me to offer him my hand, choosing instead to simply grab it from where it rested on Edward's shoulder and plonk it into his meaty fist.

"Pleasure. Although obviously, more Cullen's pleasure than mine at the moment, more's the pity."

"Cretin," Edward sighed again, using two of his fingers to pry my hand loose from Stosh's grip.

"I thought I heard you were stateside now, doing your father a favor. I knew that had to be a dirty rumor, especially after the thing in Grozy. Showoff, by the way." Stosh dropped his bulk into an empty chair at the table across from us, not bothering to wait for an invitation to do so. "Like you'd ever chain yourself down. Why'd London send you here, though? Are you being punished? Doesn't make sense for both of us to be here, even if the pandemic report tomorrow is a big deal."

"No, you had it right the first time. I'm not with the wire anymore; I'm here for ABN."

"Get _out_," Stosh wheezed. "I thought the tv gig was a temp deal. You must be dying. Are you telling me you live in an actual place now, like somewhere you can get mail and catalogs, with closets and shit? That can't be right. That's so not your style, man."

Edward tilted his head. "Styles change, Stosh. Unlike your socks, and your hairline."

"Screw you. Hey, as long as you're here, let's grab some dinner or something. I've got a pocket full of stuff to tell you about what went down with that chick from Reuters and the Italian president. Don't say no— Santiago's here. He'll kick my ass if I don't bring you along."

"You should go," I murmured when I saw him getting ready to refuse. "You can't come with me anyway, and it sounds as though you haven't seen these people in a while. Go. I'll be in a public place; I'll be completely safe and fine."

His eyebrows bridged the distance between them. "No way. There's absolutely no chance I'm letting him anywhere near you without some backup. I don't trust that guy."

"I'm not meeting him in a dark alley, for crying out loud. We'll be in a restaurant, surrounded by other people. We'll meet there, and we'll say 'goodbye' there. I'll be perfectly safe. _Go_."

He hesitated, looking from me to Stosh. "Wait. He said you weren't meeting up until later, right? Okay, what if I run out for a quick dinner and then meet up with you at the hotel so we can head over together?"

"Wooo," Stosh laughed. "This is new. You asking for permission, Cullen? Oh, how the mighty have fallen."

"You're an idiot. And I'd fall again and again as long as I could land in the same place," he informed Stosh, although his eyes never left mine. "Come out with us."

"I'm actually a little tired. I'll just grab a nap and wait for the call." It was the truth, and it was also my way of letting him know that he was free to bond without having to worry about what to do with me while they told their war stories. I knew he'd want to include me, but this was about man-time, not about introductions, and Stosh certainly hadn't invited me along. "I swear I'll call you before I leave, all right? Now take a hike and play with your friends."

"Fine," he exhaled. "I'll go, but listen to me: please don't leave the hotel without calling me. Call me from the land line if you have to. I'm not going to rely on cell service."

"I promise. Now get out of here."

Stosh had been watching me while Edward and I negotiated, carefully studying my face the whole time. "Hey, you look familiar. Do I know you from somewhere? Did you come over from the States, or do you live here?"

"Gee, you're slow, Jaworski. I should slap an orange triangle on your ass. Bella and I are co-anchors."

The big man erupted with an enormous guffaw, apparently not at all offended by the insult. "Nice. I see how it is. Well, hey, it had to happen eventually, right? You need to keep this one on a short leash, though. Stick his passport in a shredder; that might slow him down a little."

I held both my hands up, trying really hard not to tell him to go to hell. "I'm not holding any leash, short or long. Not that it's any of your business, because it's not."

He grinned at me, clearly satisfied. "Damn straight it's not. Good for you, even though you really should have told me to go to hell. Oh, I like this one, Cullen. She's all right."

Edward shook his head. "You have no idea. If we're doing this, let's do it." He shifted himself around our little table, then bent down over to put his face directly in front of mine again. "You. Please don't do anything that'll make me crazy. Crazier. You know what I mean. Just don't, okay?"

"Get out of here so I can go back to the hotel and steal the vanity kits and shower caps. I'll call; I swear."

"Promise?"

"Trust." The two words were now our all-purpose theme song.

He squinted at me, then rolled his eyes and gave me a brutally quick kiss. "Let's shuffle, Stosh. You might have all day, but I don't."

I watched them stroll out the door, Edward's elegant form slightly stooped as he bent to catch something Stosh was saying.

Once I got back to our room, I pulled off my shoes and stretched out on the plush bed. Jet lag and a day full of tension caught up with me, and it wasn't too long before I started to doze, my phone cradled on the pillow next to me.

An hour later, that phone kicked me out of dreamland with a call from Aro, inviting me to meet him for a late dinner at a restaurant in Les Pâquis, not too far from the hotel. I had another hour before I needed to get up and get ready, so I set the alarm and drifted off again. When it woke me for the second time, the room was dark and I was thoroughly refreshed.

I rang Edward to let him know what was going on, like the trustworthy person I was. When he picked up the call, an explosion of loud laughter almost blasted out my eardrum.

"Hey," he greeted me. "Finally. Hang on, let me get away from these losers." They were yelling something at him in the background, but their voices faded slightly as he put some distance between himself and the crowd. "What's the plan?"

"I'm meeting him in forty-five minutes at a place called 'La Porte Cachée' a few blocks away here in Pâquis. It's some kind of private dinner club."

"I'm in Pâquis, too. I'll be there."

"You can't. He can't see you, and it's apparently a 'members only' deal."

"Okay, but I'll be there anyway. I'll have my producer cut a hole in the ceiling and drop me in," he joked, harking back to our first meeting with Peter at Jean Georges. "I can be quite stealthy when I need to be, you know."

"I'm painfully aware that you're part-ninja, but seriously, I get one shot at this. You know that."

"It's not up for debate. If you're going, I'm going to be there, because I love you and I don't trust him. And before you argue with me, take a minute to realize that you'd do the exact same thing if the situation were reversed, no matter how many times I told you to butt out. See how irritating it is to have people care about you?"

"So, so annoying," I agreed, smiling despite the fact that I was indeed a little irritated.

"I know. You could always try to dislike me again, but I'm not sure how much luck you're going to have with it now that you know how remarkable I am."

"Idiot. Are you having fun?"

"Fun might not be the right word for what I'm having. They sound a lot like jocks at a high school reunion, reliving their glory days. They're a cautionary tale about peaking too early."

"This would not be your problem."

"You're incredibly sexy when you're saying exactly what I need to hear. But it's still not going to keep me from going to the restaurant and keeping an eye on that greasy little fidget."

"Edward, I'd better not see you. I mean it. I can handle him flirting, or whatever."

"Excellent. That makes one of us," he grumbled. "You're the boss. I'm just riding shotgun."

"Right. Sure you are. Leave me alone now; I need to get ready and get over there. "

"I'm on my way. I hope you're wearing something really ugly."

We hung up and I scrambled to get ready. Clearly, my standard pants-and-blazer combo wasn't appropriate for a late-night dinner with a possibly mad genius, so I rifled through my bag, trying to find an outfit that said "professional, but not unfriendly", finally settling on a dark blue wool jersey wrap dress that I deluded myself made me look much taller than I actually was. I threw on some boots, brushed the tangles out of my hair, and ran downstairs to grab a taxi to the restaurant.

The unassuming façade of the restaurant was marked solely by a vibrant blood-red door with gleaming brass fixtures. A top-hatted doorman stood waiting beside it, promptly grabbing the handle and swinging it open for me as it became clear I meant to enter the establishment. Once inside, I was struck by how the sharp night air on the street contrasted with the seductively warm temperature inside; the hostess station was flanked by several large pots of exotic orchids, and four large red velvet benches were ranged against the edges of the intimate antechamber. I gave the sleek young woman at the desk my name, and she wordlessly motioned for me to follow her into the dining room.

The room was less about gastronomy than it was about theatre, with rich leather booths lining the walls and separated from one another by floor-to-ceiling black velvet drapes, like a prison cell block made of fabric. The area in the middle of the room was occupied by nothing save an enormous cylindrical fish tank, at the center of which lived a breathtaking white glass sculpture in the style of Dale Chihuly. Brightly-hued tropical fish large and small swam up, down, around and through the sculpture, adding life to the cold glass art. Despite the dim lighting provided by the large candelabras around the space, I managed to follow the hostess to a booth at the rear of the room without incident, and came to a stop behind her before I left a mark on her Prada suit jacket. I noted with a mixture of relief and disappointment that Edward was nowhere in sight, not that I could have checked every discreet little booth in the place without a flashlight.

"Signor Castiglione, your guest has arrived," the hostess murmured, stepping aside to gesture toward the empty banquette in front of her.

"Grazie, Giana." Aro inclined his head, dismissing the woman before he turned his gaze toward me. "Isabella, you look lovely. Please, sit. Let's enjoy our dinner."

Aro had traded his workaday lurex for what appeared to be a black suede suit jacket with a black leather collar, under which he wore a plain white tuxedo shirt without a tie, the open French cuffs peeking out from beyond the hems of the jacket sleeves. He wasn't my cup of tea at all, but I could understand how this "ringmaster of Hades" look might work on someone more impressionable. It did, however, serve to make me feel extremely unfashionable.

"I took the liberty of ordering for us both," he announced as I settled myself onto the wide bench opposite him. "I hope this is all right. I am a frequent diner here, and the chef often prepares dishes for me which don't appear on the printed menu. My experience permits me the advantage of knowing his particular culinary strengths, and I wanted to share those with you."

"That's perfectly fine, provided I won't be facing a plate of chilled monkey brains."

He laughed. "Sadly, they're out of season. Nothing more exotic than chicken, I'm afraid. I trust you're not a vegetarian? You strike me as a woman with more sense than that."

"Well, I fail to see the connection between sense and a meat-free diet, but no, as it happens, I'm not a vegetarian."

His fingers caressed the stem of the wine glass in front of him. "You misunderstand me, which might be a function of the curst limitations of the English language. I meant 'sense' in the more literal way, in that your senses would demand a broader and more substantial variety than can be found in a vegetarian diet."

I wasn't sure how to respond to that, so I merely nodded my head and hoped that he would take from the action whatever would satisfy him. There was a glass of wine in front of my place setting as well, but I opted instead for the iced water next to it, wanting to stay as sober as possible for this conversation.

"So tell me about yourself, Aro. I confess that I've lately been forced to reevaluate my notions of what scientists are like; I thought you were all sickly-looking academic types who spent your days fiddling around with delicate machinery and statistical anomalies."

"Ahh," Aro smiled. "Yes, well, to a certain extent, the stereotype is accurate. We do like our machinery, and we're fond of numbers and results and analyses. As a general rule, I think you'll find that most scientists tend to restrict themselves to their particular field of study. They develop a bit of tunnel vision in that regard, and don't often pause to consider either where their discoveries fit into the larger scheme of things, or the practical applications of the things they learn. Fortunately, my attention is slightly more elastic than that of my associates."

I decided to gamble on his arrogance a little and see if he'd give up anything interesting. "Do your coworkers discount computer science as being somewhat less important than theoretical physics?"

His sharp eyes considered me for a moment before he answered. "My coworkers are often quite determined to focus on the wrong things. They are, nevertheless, a very intelligent lot."

"Why do you say they focus on the wrong things? Is the advancement of scientific understanding the wrong thing in your view?"

"Only God can make a tree, Isabella," he murmured. "And the moment He did so, Man figured out how to turn it into a weapon. Ah, here we are."

He gestured to the server who stood before us holding two large square plates of china, upon which rested what appeared to be a Napoleon of sorts, with layers of chicken and tomatoes. But the dinner wasn't what was so remarkable about the presentation; while it certainly looked delicious, I couldn't help but let the fact that the woman holding the plates was completely nude distract me slightly from the meal she brought to our table.

Aro studied me for my reaction, his lips curling slightly as he watched me process what was happening. "Does the sight of a woman's breasts make you uncomfortable, Isabella?"

"It'd be pretty inconvenient for me if it did."

He laughed and dismissed the server with a gentle caress to her shoulder after she'd placed our plates in front of us. "I'm so glad you don't seem to harbor the same provincial views as so many of your compatriots. The beauty of a female is one of very few things on earth that cannot be catalogued and quantified by science."

"Actually, I think there are a bunch of mathematical formulas used to calculate the ideal feminine face and form."

"Whoever develops and employs such formulas misses the point entirely. What makes a woman beautiful isn't a specificity resulting from a numerical model. Her true beauty lies in the how she can be persuaded to compromise in ways great and small: her posture, her stride, her hesitance, her whole body — so much of it made by nature to be accommodating. You are sublime in your ability to adapt."

I desperately wanted to look anywhere but his eyes, even as I accepted that doing so would be viewed by him as one of the ways in which a woman could compromise herself. Instead, I forced myself to meet his gaze as blandly as I could. "I think you'll find that some of us are less willing to adapt than others, Signor."

"Oh, Isabella, but you're delightful! Please, eat, enjoy your meal, and let us confine ourselves to topics that are somewhat less controversial." He raised his fork and motioned to me that I should do the same, and while I didn't want to play 'follow the leader' with him on any level, eating dinner was what I'd said I'd do with him, so I followed suit and tucked in to my meal.

Conversation continued in an entirely harmless vein for some time, but the course of careful questioning led me to the conclusion that this man put himself far above the intellect of the people who surrounded him. With everything he said, and with everything he refused to say, Aro was telling me he was convinced that he and he alone had the ability to judge the wheres and hows and whys of it all. I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that if there was trouble coming to CERN, it was getting there in his pocket; the only thing left to discover was what that trouble looked like, and just how much damage it was capable of causing.

I was so focused on the man seated opposite from me that it took me a while to realize the formerly empty space in the center of the dining room no longer sounded as desolate as it had been when I first arrived. When the still-nude server returned to clear our dishes from the table, I used the distraction to take a quick peek around our half-drawn curtain at the room, and had to stifle a gasp as I did so. The floor was now quite crowded with naked couples of all sorts and descriptions, all of them slowly moving against one another while soft music piped down on them from speakers mounted in the ceiling.

"Who owns this place — Caligula?" I couldn't help blurting, and Aro's subsequent laugh was a soft one.

"Well, I confess that I am a principal investor, although this is the first time anyone has compared me to a Roman emperor," he responded, clearly quite pleased. "Does it shock you, Isabella? It shouldn't, you know. This is why Man exists: our primary purpose is to find our pleasure on this earth while we live, to know and to taste it all, and then to vanish into dust when our time is done. All scientific efforts to either prolong this or curtail it work against a flawless design, because the temporary nature is what makes it all so appealing. Tomorrow, this will be gone, but tonight, it's here to enjoy." He held his hand out to me. "Will you dance with me?"

"Signor, I—"

"Please, Isabella. It's Aro. I will not ask you to remove so much as your left boot," he interrupted me. "I only want to enjoy this moment before it's gone. We share a moment in time here, you and I. Whether you wish to make more of it than it currently is, or you wish to part as friends, this is a moment between us, and I have no desire to waste any of my moments. Come; one dance, a brief and proper one, and then if you like, I will kiss your hand and wish you well."

The thought of being anywhere close to him truly made my skin crawl, but leaving the booth meant being that much closer to the front door, and I figured I could excuse myself to use the restroom and quickly lose myself in the throng of flesh with relative ease. In any event, being among other people, even very naked ones, was preferable to being alone with Aro, and so I let him take my hand and lead me out of the booth and onto the teeming floor.

The air was thick with the thrill of the forbidden, and everyone around us seemed lost together in the warm, hazy darkness. I tried to stay on the periphery of the crowd, but barely a moment after Aro put his left arm around my waist, I found myself engulfed in a confusing tangle of limbs and shoulders and bare chests, both male and female. Forcing myself to keep my eyes level so as not to encounter visuals of meaty bits in various states of arousal, I attempted once more to steer us toward the edge of the crowd, but the firm pressure of Aro's arm around me made the task a difficult one. He kept his hips away from mine at first, but the longer we remained on the floor, the closer and closer he drew me toward himself. The look on his face was unexpected, in that he appeared to regard the whole experience as less seduction than experiment, as though he were wondering what might happen if he placed Element Bella into Solution Debauchery.

"Hi there," a calm voice behind me suddenly interrupted, and I turned my head to see Edward. He stood there unmoving, eyes glittering with something more dangerous than I'd ever seen in them before, and an entirely different Smile of Death occupying his mouth. "Take your hands off of her, before I take your hands off of you."

Aro's arm remained around my waist, but his grip on me loosened slightly. "Ah, the colleague. Yes, of course. I don't recall inviting you to join us. This is a private establishment."

Edward snorted. "What are you planning to do—arrest me for trespassing? Go ahead. I'm pretty sure I'll survive a night in a cushy Swiss jail. Believe me when I tell you that it'd be the lap of luxury compared to some of the places I've been. In fact, how many nights would I get for giving you a face tattoo in the shape of my fist if you don't let go of her by the time I need to take another breath? That's just the kind of travel bargain I'm looking for, and a hell of a lot cheaper than our hotel."

"Let me go, Aro," I echoed, infinitely more frightened of the look on Edward's face than I ever was of the enigmatic man who'd maneuvered me into this sea of skin.

His hand briefly gripped against the small of my back, and then slid slowly across my hip until I was free of him. "My apologies if I've kept you here too long. You hardly needed your Neanderthal minder to rescue you, Isabella; you've always been free to leave, you know. I suppose this means our moment is over, yes? Well, it was a pleasant one." Then he turned toward Edward, and the two men silently appraised one another before he spoke again. "A woman who crosses an ocean has already made some decisions. I wish you had as much faith in Isabella's intellect as I do."

Edward stepped forward until the two men were almost as close to one another as Aro and I had been, although the mood was decidedly less erotic. "I'd bet my life on her intellect, and I'd gladly take yours for endangering her in any way. And now, if you don't mind, we'll leave you to your floppy little party here, so you can play Svengali with someone less important to me than this particular woman."

Aro took my hand again and brushed his lips across my knuckles. "Goodnight then, Isabella. Perhaps another time, when you're less...encumbered."

I barely had time to make my goodbye look as good as I could before Edward was gesturing toward the exit, and I stumbled past the still-writhing crowd into the chill of the well-lit street. Edward walked at a punishing clip for two blocks before stopping and turning to look at me.

"I'm sorry," he said before I could thank him for wresting me away from Aro and then curse him out for interfering. "I'm really sorry. Just give me a minute." He was breathing hard, exponentially more upset than he'd been when we left the CERN facility earlier that afternoon, so I let him calm down at his own pace. When it became clear to me that he was still struggling, I nudged him and we kept walking, neither one of us saying a word, my hand firmly gripped in his until we'd reached Quai du Mont-Blanc and walked the length of the boulevard back to our hotel.

We rode the elevator up to our floor without conversation, and it was only when we'd entered the room and shut the door that he finally found his words.

"I'm really having a hard time with this," he sighed, pulling me toward the bed until we were both lying on our sides across the 600-thread count expanse, facing one another. "I'm sorry. I know you can take care of yourself, and I know I have to trust that you will, but Jesus, just the thought of him touching—I can't even see straight, and that was a half-hour ago." His fingers found my hair, and he absently ran them through the loose strands. "I get it now. You're so much better at this than I'll ever be. How the hell did you not barricade the door when I left for Chechnya?"

That made me smile, and I reached up to stroke his stubbled cheek with my thumb. "It's who you are. If I love you, I have to accept it. But even more than that, it would kill me to know that I forced you to be less than you're capable of being just to keep me happy."

"I'm really, really pissed off at myself. I don't want to hold you down, either. I swear I don't."

"I know that. I do, even though you can't do this again, ever. The good news is that I'm not usually in situations where sleazy megalomaniacs are forcing me to dance with a crowd of Euro-nudists."

He barked out a short laugh and pulled me closer to him. "Christ, I love you so much. It's ridiculous. Also, I just spent an hour and a half watching all kinds of wrong people walk around naked. I need you naked now, because I'm not ashamed to admit that it did kind of turn me on a little. Objections?"

"None spring immediately to mind."

He tugged on the tie of my wrap dress, undoing the bow so that the side came loose and sliding his hand underneath the fabric until his fingers met my skin, threading the tie out of the loophole to let both sides fall free. "Oh yes," he murmured as he watched the fabric fall away from me. "I like unwrapping you. You're the best present I've ever gotten."

His fingers continued to travel over me, pushing and pulling everything off and away until there was nothing left between them and me, stroking gently while I shivered with goosebumps and pulled his face close to mine so that I could kiss him.

"Where did he touch you, Bella? Show me every place. I want to erase it all and write my name on them instead. He doesn't belong there, and I do."

"You do," I agreed, and led him to my waist, and my hands, and my hip, and he kissed away any memory of anyone else. I rolled until I was on top of him then, and together we pulled off his shirt and undid his pants so that they could join the pile of abandoned clothes on the floor.

As if by unspoken agreement, he didn't hunt around for a condom, and I didn't ask him to, never having been more grateful than I was at that moment that I'd faithfully taken my pills despite the years that passed without any sex at all in my life. I needed him to know nothing could ever come between us if we didn't let it, and nothing ever would if I had any say in the matter. He turned us so that he was on top of me once more and pushed his way inside of me, inhaling sharply as he did and then groaning "Jesus", because it was all so, so good.

He tried so hard to go slowly, but I didn't need or want him to, and so I nodded in response to his silent question as his pace grew more frantic with each passing second. The force pushed me down into the soft white sheets, his elbows knocking into my knees with every thrust as I held tight to his wrists, noises I'd never made before escaping my lips while he spent his frustration and fear and worry by torturing me in the most delicious ways.

With a slight pivot of his hips, he finally ended my gorgeous agony, then pulled the lower half of my still-quivering body up toward him so that he could hurry up and join me in the aftermath of the frenzy. When he got there, he telescoped his outstretched arms and rested his forehead against my sternum, panting hard and trying not to land too much of his weight on me.

"Even the mistakes I make with you end up perfect," he marveled when he caught his breath. "How is that possible? How? This is unreal."

"It's also uncomfortable," I laughed, twisting a little so that he fell to the side of me and putting my arms around his waist. We lay there for a moment, neither one of us speaking as we stared out the window at the half-moon shining over the silver lake.

"Did you manage to get anything out of him before I crashed the party and screwed it all up?" he asked after a while.

I moved my head in an uncertain direction. "Nothing definite. But I know it's him. I know it. We can't do anything else here. We need to go back to New York, and I need to sit down with Jake to see if he's willing to help us figure it out."

"What did you two talk about?"

"It was all pretty strange, really. He said his coworkers were focused on the wrong things, and that they didn't stop to think about how what they discovered could be used in the real world. He quoted Kilmer's line about how only God can make a tree, and then said something about how man turned it into a weapon right afterward. He also had a lot to say about women, and how we're designed to compromise and adapt. There was some talk about music and art, and enjoying every moment." I stretched and yawned. "I'm exhausted."

We managed to shift ourselves under the covers, neither one of us even remotely motivated to do more than that before we settled in for the night. I snuggled up against his side, and his arm wound under my neck and across my back, where it pressed against my spine to keep me close.

"I worry that he had a point, though," I confessed, my final thought for the day drifting through the pleasant fog sifting down around my brain.

"About what?"

"I worry about compromising too much. About adapting too much. Maybe he's right, and I'm fighting a losing battle with genetics."

Edward's other arm came around me to reinforce the hold he already had, and his lips brushed against my forehead. "I'm going to see if I can help you out with that," he answered. "Get some sleep now."

# # #

A/N - Hello, and thank you all so much for the amazing reviews and all of your favoritings, alertings, and recommendations!

ciaobella27 and littlesecret84 read this for me before I send it out here into the ficosphere. When you add up the numbers in their names, they equal awesome.

We are coming to the end of this story; I'm going to say that there are two or three chapters left to write. You're all just remarkable and beautiful for hanging out with me while I get this stuff together every month, and everything you say to me makes all the effort so completely worthwhile. Thank you, again, for putting the gas in my tank.


	23. The Greatest Story Never Told

# # #

The Greatest Story Never Told

It took every ounce of persuasion I was capable of generating to get Jacob Black to meet me for a drink. He was genuinely spooked by my crack-of-dawn call on Monday morning, and insisted on taking the call on his cell while he sat in his car in Brookhaven's parking lot and sipped his pre-work Dunkin' Donuts extra-large with a turbo shot.

"Listen, I did my part. I got you to Aro. As much as I like you, I can't jeopardize everything I've worked for here. Don't ask me to."

"Jake, come on. I'm not asking you to do anything more than just talk to me about what he could possibly be up to. What could that hurt?"

"You don't get it." His voice was sharp, and for the first time in our acquaintance, he let me see that he was hiding a temper underneath all of that easy charm. "You go chasing after a story and pick apart everything based on a hunch, or whatever it is that made you look at us. This is a story for you, and that's great. But this is my _life_. When this story's over, you move on to the next one. What do I get to move on to, Bella? Where do I go when you've compromised me and made me a pariah in the field I've devoted everything to? You want me to take my physics doctorate and open up a repair shop on the South Shore?"

"I protect my sources, always. And even if I didn't, this isn't some story I'm chasing. This is personal. I can't explain how or why. You need me to guarantee that this will never, ever see the light of day in a broadcast? You've got it. I need your help. I'm desperate, and that's the truth."

There was silence on the other end of the call for a moment, and I could hear him breathing while he wrestled with himself. "Why should I trust you? You're a reporter. Asking you to sit on a story is like asking me to pretend the sun orbits the earth."

"Please. Please. Set the terms; whatever they are, I'll honor them."

"I need to think about it. I'll call you back."

"When?"

"When I call you back."

"Meet me. Let's just sit down so I can tell you what I think. You don't even have to answer a single question. Just listen, and then tell me if I'm crazy. If I am, you can get up and walk away. Please. Just a drink. No questions."

"Ugh. Okay, fine. Maybe. Just a drink. Why the hell am I agreeing to this? You're going to ruin me."

"I wouldn't. I won't. I swear on anything you want me to swear on. We're just friends meeting up for a drink. CERN who? Never heard of him."

"I really hate you right now," he groaned, and I smiled because I knew I had him.

"No you don't. And I promise you I won't give you a reason to, either."

"You're totally buying," he informed me, and we hung up shortly thereafter with plans to meet up in the city on Wednesday evening. It wasn't until I'd slipped the phone back into my bag that I realized I already had plans on Wednesday. Big plans. Parental plans of the Cullen variety.

Edward met the news of my conflict with predictable sangfroid while we scrambled around our jet-lag to get ready for work. "Tell him to meet you at Le Bernadin's bar," he suggested, as he rifled through his drawers on the hunt for a matched pair of socks. "We should be able to juggle both things without too much trouble."

"Your mother's going to think I've got bladder-control issues if I keep excusing myself to run to the restroom. I'm not sure that's the kind of impression I want to make on her."

"I'll deal with her. You deal with him. Aaah...hello, socks. Are these blue, or black?" He held them up for my inspection, and I shrugged. "Right. If they're blue, they're that blue that doesn't matter because it's close enough to black. Done. Let's am-scray."

I was ridiculously sleepy despite the cushy return trip from Geneva to New York; between the time change and the day-long travel, there were so many cobwebs in my brain, and no amount of caffeine appeared capable of knocking me back upright. Edward, however, was annoyingly spry and alert, and I had to beg him to take it easy on me until I built up a head of steam on the day.

We spilled out of our cab and made our way up to the office, running right into a solid wall of Peter before we could escape into our shared sanctuary.

"Do the two of you ever actually eat anything besides each other's faces when you're in a restaurant? Enquiring minds want to know."

He brandished a copy of _Bild_ under our noses, the German tabloid opened up to a fairly large photo of us making out at the coffee shop in Geneva. Edward looked amazing, but I thought I looked a little disheveled, and not in a good way despite the fact that the kiss had been a pretty great one.

"Come on, Peter. We didn't do it on purpose." Edward playfully gnashed his teeth at Kathy on his way toward his side of the office, towing Peter and myself in the wake of his complete lack of concern.

"What, you tripped and accidentally smashed your mouths together? Come on yourself, Edward. _Bild_, for crying out loud. It had to be _Bild_, right? And should I even ask why you felt the need to fly to Switzerland to make a scene?"

"Well, you can ask, but I can't guarantee you're going to get an answer that'll satisfy you. We were off the clock. And so what? Who cares about _Bild_?"

Peter tossed the offending paper on Edward's desk. "Oh, only the four-and-a-half million people who read it every day. Four and a half million, Edward. All around the world. It has three times the circulation of _People_. You couldn't have been more flagrant about the thing if you'd paid for billboards in every major city across the globe."

"Where were you with the bright ideas when we were cooking up this elaborate reveal? Disappointing that you hide your light under a bushel like that, mi jefe."

Peter's palms landed squarely on the desk in front of him, and he leaned over it. "Listen. We had a strategy for dealing with this, a strategy you two have chosen to ignore. I don't want a relationship between my anchors becoming the news."

"Have a little faith in humanity. People don't really care about this stuff when there are so many other things happening in the world, right? I mean, why would they? What difference could it possibly make to them?"

"You sad, sad, clueless bastard," Peter mourned, shaking his head. "Just come talk to me before either one of you does something stupid, okay? That's about all I can ask right now. Bella?"

I nodded, trying to figure out exactly what "stupid" might entail in this situation, and reasonably sure that we'd probably stumble into that definition without actually realizing it beforehand. Peter left the business of our relationship behind him while we discussed an infinitely easier topic — our show ratings, which were through the roof. The one-two punch of our tornado coverage and the hostage crisis, when combined with our obvious chemistry, had basically catapulted the show so far above the competition that the network's rate card for ads placed during our hour was easily going to double in the next quarter. The suits were building a shrine in our honor on the executive floor, and Peter was fielding so many hearty back-slaps that he'd looked into buying a kevlar vest.

"I'm really happy. I'm really proud of you two. And even if the clock is running on this current set-up, I couldn't have asked for a better launch for the new format, so thank you both."

And there it was, the reminder that this was all temporary, that I only had so many months to enjoy this current proximity to Edward before he returned to his native habitat. I had no doubt at all that he loved me; I had no doubt at all that I loved him right back. I'd promised not to focus on the future, but it was so hard to know that my future held endless uncertain weeks or months without him. I wasn't a whiner, but I couldn't deny that there lived inside of me an angry little voice that wondered again and again why I couldn't have what I wanted the way that I wanted it. I missed him already, even though he was standing right in front of me.

"Okay, can we be done with this now? I've got work to do." I tried to be casual about it, but the truth was that I just wanted to get away from the particular reality in that room. Edward raised an eyebrow at me, quickly and no doubt accurately assessing my mood, but not offering anything in the way of comfort or assurance. He merely nodded at me and asked Peter to stick around for a celebratory cup of coffee, which he then yelled at Kathy to bring them.

I escaped to the quiet safety of my office, dragging my sore heart behind me like a sack full of lead and praying that I could find the courage to walk it like I talked it. I'd meant every word I'd ever said about Edward needing the freedom to be the sort of rara avis journalist he was. I meant it with every fiber of my being. I just wished that he could be that and be with me at the same time.

The minute the clock struck nine, the calls started to pour in. It started small, with in-network queries, and then quickly snowballed into a pile of requests from virtually every media outlet on earth, leaving Kathy to scramble as she stonewalled and passed them all through to the PR department. They quickly advised us against answering our own lines without having the calls screened, and the result was that the guys in the bullpen were shortly being pelted with questions about what exactly was going on between Edward and myself.

"See? Nobody cares," I informed Edward as we entered the morning planning meeting, leaning on sarcasm and trusting it to lift me over the obstacles in my emotional steeplechase.

"Do _you_ care? Because I only care if you care. Everyone else can get bent."

My answer was a sigh. "I don't like that it's becoming the most important thing about me. I have nobody but myself to blame, though. Well, myself, and the fact that you said nice things to me in a public cafe when I was sleep-deprived and vulnerable."

His hand brushed against my back, and he bent his head to speak quietly into my ear. "I meant every word. And I'll fix it."

"How? Are you going to buy every copy of _Bild_ and then borrow the mind-wiping pen from _Men in Black_?"

Edward showed me my personal smile. "No, but let's call that Plan B in case what I've got doesn't work."

No matter what my misgivings were, that smile invariably lightened the mood, and so I added my own grin to it and sat down next to him to hash out the stories on deck for the day.

Everybody in the planning meeting spent the first fifteen minutes of our time together bitching about the annoying media calls from gossip folks desperate to get a bead on our relationship. Victor slapped the furor down, but the look he gave us was clearly all about how irritating he found it that his anchors had become the story. I had to stop myself from apologizing to him, and to Peter, and to the guys in the bullpen, and to Kathy. I was sorry that they had to deal with all the inconvenience that came with the thing, sorry that what should have been something private and uninteresting to bystanders had mysteriously become so very public and fascinating simply because of where Edward and I sat every evening. As though figuring out what we were and what came next for us wasn't already difficult enough, we suddenly found that we needed to do that with what felt like the eyes of the world watching us.

Perhaps to punish me for our indiscretions in Geneva, Victor threw me the task of prepping a piece on the start of Roman Polanski's house arrest in Zurich pending extradition to the states to stand trial for having sex with a minor before I was even born. "We've got the lead attorneys from Polanski's stateside legal team coming in for some couch time tonight. Please get clear on the original case from '78 in addition to their objections about the extradition."

"Victor, I'll do the due diligence on the research, but I can't return serves on intricate legal matters. I'm going to have to softball some of this stuff. I'm not Nancy Grace. "

"I'm aware, thank God. Don't let them take you down the case-citing road. Just get them to explain why the legal mumbo-jumbo should matter at all when we're talking about what a grown man did to a thirteen-year-old girl."

When he put it that way, I could understand why the only woman on the floor got the assignment. Not that every man in the room wouldn't have happily lined up to kick Polanski in the nuts for what he'd done, but as a woman, I was uniquely qualified to cut through the rhetoric and remind the audience about what rested at the heart of the matter. And I knew that this wasn't negative sexism on Victor's part; he was merely putting me forward as the strongest argument he had for why the viewers should care about what happened to a girl long since grown into womanhood.

Accepting the assignment without further question, I automatically started turning potential questions for the legal team around in my head. The meeting wrapped, and I spent the remainder of the day mainlining caffeine, wading through three decades' worth of case history on Polanski, and studiously avoiding ringing phones, pinging texts, and dinging emails. I kept trying to convince myself that the prurient interest in what the state of things between Edward and myself might be would blow over, but by the afternoon meeting, it became all too clear that if anything, the interest had only grown.

"We don't comment on this situation," the head of the PR department reminded us as she drummed tense fingers against the conference room table. "What you do in your private lives isn't news."

"Yeah, you know, for someone who hangs around people from the news division, you really don't have much of a grip on what the word means, do you," Edward chuckled derisively. "Stories that people want to know more about are news, barracuda. Trying to dictate public interest is a lot like trying to ride a drunk iguana."

"I'll put a bullet in the iguana's brain before I let it stampede all over this network's policies," she shot back at him, clearly about as fond of her new nickname as I'd been of "Mary".

"It's a big iguana. Big, and very, very drunk. You'd better be packing a grenade launcher."

"Don't worry about it. This is my problem, not yours."

The look he gave her was one I knew well, because I'd seen him wear it around me on more than one occasion. Edward didn't like being managed, and he liked being told what was and what wasn't his business even less. The whole thing made me nervous.

"Do I want to know why he's talking about drunk iguanas, or should I just pretend I didn't hear that?"

Emmett's question made me realize that, like it or not, my business had suddenly become everyone's business, and while I wasn't crazy about everyone knowing something so personal about me, the last thing on earth I was was ashamed of it. I loved him. When he left me, as leave me he would, the world would know why I'd stopped smiling, but maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. Maybe hiding the sadness would be cheating. It wasn't as though he'd be leaving for a selfish reason; he'd be leaving for a cause I passionately supported and understood. He'd be leaving because he had to, and when he came back to me — whenever he came back to me, however he came back to me — I would know that I represented the only "home" on earth for him. I could accept that. I might not have liked it, but I could accept it.

Okay, yes, it sucked.

We rolled through the first half of the show without incident, ticking off the rundown like so many items on a shopping list. As time wore on, I began to notice that Edward's customary energy was off. Not that he lacked energy by any means; rather, it seemed...contained somehow, as though he'd taken all of his usual outward signs of restlessness and swallowed them, resulting in an unnaturally still outer shell with an almost-incandescent inner glow. In short, he looked like a supernova in display-case glass.

"What's going on with you?" I hissed during the second commercial break.

He turned his eyes toward me, and they were full of cool resolve. Covering his mic and mine, he leaned in close to my ear. "I'm making an executive decision, and I need you to be okay with it. Just tell me you have no problem confirming that we're together. Say that for me, right now. Please."

"Edward, what the hell are you planning? I'm not making out with you on live television."

"No? Pity. That 'horny teenager' remark still stings a bit. I won't touch you, I swear. Just roll with it, okay? The only way out of this stupid situation is to cut the speculation off at the knees, and you know it. The barracuda's wrong."

"Holy crap. Come on, you're going to give me a heart attack. I'm just going to go sit on the couch and have a nice chat with the Polanski lawyers. I don't want to get in trouble."

"Say you're okay with it if I get in trouble, though. Say it."

"Oh my God." I was once again caught between laughter and absolute terror; I'd break any rule to get a story, but in my entire existence, I'd never gone against authority when it came to my personal life. I had no idea what detention after school entailed, and I was pretty sure it got exponentially worse in the adult arena, but how could I ever have a problem with the world knowing how I felt about Edward? I couldn't. I didn't. And that decided the matter for me, because I would always choose him. "Fine. I'm okay. I don't want you to get in trouble, and you're scaring the shit out of me, but I'm in. I'm on your side."

"Best teammate ever," he grinned, and lifted his hands from our mics. I could hear Ben in my ear, asking us why we suddenly felt the need to go mute when everyone in the studio was pretty well used to listening to our little love chats, but I pointedly ignored him and the subsequent laughter from all assembled while I gathered my notes and headed over to the seating area to await the Polanski lawyers.

When the commercial break ended, Edward calmly threw over to me, and I tried to ignore everything else while I skewered the lawyers over using legal technicalities to help a confessed child molester evade justice. They maintained that Polanski would never have confessed had he not been assured that the plea bargain would mean no jail time, but the meat of the matter rested in the appalling lack of faith the lawyers and the accused placed in our judicial system, and I kept going back to the point that innocent people didn't generally confess to crimes they haven't committed. Furthermore, I found it disturbing that Switzerland, so famed for its policy of neutrality that it had become a punchline to that effect, would deliberately shield someone who was not merely accused, but actually convicted, of a crime that did not involve the prospect of a death penalty. In short, Switzerland was a safe harbor for wealthy, famous criminals, and that seemed pretty wrong to me.

Ben signaled me to wrap the piece, so I thanked the men for their time and threw back to Edward, who tapped his hands against the desk and then directed his attention to Camera Two.

"Thank you for that fascinating look at one man's effort to avoid the consequences of his actions. Finally this evening, I'm supposed to be sharing with you all a story about energy-saving ideas during the holiday season, but since we're already on the subject of Switzerland, I thought I might take this time instead to talk to you about something slightly less abstract."

"What is he doing? Where's the script?" Ben shouted in my ear, and I clamped my lips together as I sat on the edge of my chair to watch the spectacle, silently praying I'd still have a career by the time he'd finished talking. "Rose, stay on him until we figure out what the hell is going on."

I knew that Edward heard what I was hearing, but he completely ignored it, pulling his earpiece out of his ear and pressing on with what he had to say. "Throughout this past day, my co-anchor and I have been forced to bob and weave our way around a crushing number of phone calls from various media outlets regarding a picture taken of us while we were on vacation in Geneva late last week. For those of you who haven't yet seen the picture, I assure you that it's nothing very scandalous. We were kissing each other over coffee in a restaurant.

"Now, we're both adults, so we don't need a legal team to sort this out for us, and the fact that we make an effort to be objective about the stories we present to you doesn't necessarily mean that we promised to be objective about each other. Which is good, because we're not, and whatever chemistry you see in front of the cameras doesn't end when the red lights go off. I don't understand exactly _why_ anybody cares, but the bombardment today leads me to believe that some of you do, and it's not our style to run away from telling you the truth. So here's the truth: we love the news. We love finding the news, and we love sharing the news, and we love each other. Neither one of us is ashamed about any of those things.

"I hope that clears things up for you. I hope you can separate who we are from what we do. I hope you don't expect me to not kiss Isabella in public every so often, because I'm definitely going to disappoint you there provided she's willing to let me. And I hope we can return the focus to stories that should matter far more to you than this one."

The studio was dead silent. I'm not sure anyone even blinked for a moment. Rose was the first to recover, and she cued up a long shot on Camera Three, which had been trained on me during the interview with the lawyers. I must have looked — I don't even know, but the supremely self-satisfied expression on Edward's face made me forget where we were. Some women got messages on baseball stadium scoreboards; some women got skywriting planes, or dozens of roses on their desks at work, or graffiti tags on subway trains. I got his declaration broadcast live on the air to millions of people.

"You have anything you want to add, Isabella?"

"Mmmuhh," I answered, watching as that self-satisfied expression on his face morphed into genuine amusement and a sort of unholy glee. If the sound I made counted as confirmation, I'd said everything I really needed to say on the subject. The whole thing just left me ridiculously turned on, and I was sure that my face did more than enough talking on that score.

"Exactly. Well then, this is Edward Cullen in New York. Thank you, and good night."

"We're out," Rose announced as the flycam came to rest on the opposite side of the ceiling. "You've got a set on you, Cullen. It must be stated for the record that you've got some coconuts."

"That I do," he replied, grin firmly in place and looking as though it might very well take up permanent residence. It lasted all of thirty seconds, and then Peter pushed open the door to the studio. "Whoa, here come the cops."

"Why? Why do you do this to me? Why do you take this beautiful thing I've built and turn it into a clown car?"

The worst part of it was that Peter didn't look angry, even though he had every right to be. Instead, he looked...betrayed, and that made my heart clench. I automatically started to apologize to him, but Edward cut me off without preamble.

"Think about it. Every news outlet that called today wanted to know what was going on. We're in the news business, Peter, and it's not like Bella and I aren't eventually going to be caught kissing again. I hope. I'm pretty sure. You want to give that to another media outlet, or do you want the story you created to belong to you?"

"But the network — and PR —"

"Aren't newspeople," Edward finished. "Everyone wanted to know. We told them. Which clip do you think they'll play when they cover the story?"

There was silence as the two men studied each other for a moment. Finally, Peter sighed. "If this isn't a non-issue in the span of one cycle, I'm going to be really, _really_ unhappy. And Edward, this doesn't give you permission to be flagrant. You understand me?"

He nodded. "Got it. If we need to molest each other, we'll try to remember to take it to a quiet corner."

"You'll do more than try."

"I'll do more than try. I can't speak for Bella, of course. She's always had a tough time controlling herself around me."

"Take me seriously, please," Peter warned him. "If we're going to — "

"Ap-ap-ap. Not now, all right? When you know for sure."

Peter's hands flew up in the air. "Right. Of course, because God forbid anything around here happens in any kind of carefully planned way, with full disclosure to all parties. You're pretty damned lucky you're as good as you are, Edward."

"Well, so are you, even if I sound like an egomaniac when I remind you about that."

"You're officially my least favorite person today." His head whipped around to find me. "You too, Bella."

"I didn't do anything!"

"Doesn't matter," he snapped, lowering his brow. "Tomorrow morning, we're meeting with PR and corporate to assess this latest development. Eight o'clock. Be early."

As he walked away from us, I moved to stand closer to Edward. "What was he going to say before you cut him off just now?"

He shrugged, but I'd had enough experience with those shrugs to know that it was more than a "no clue" move. "If we're going to what, Edward? What are we going to do?"

"We're going to do...whatever you want. You're the boss; I just play piano around here and get into trouble for us."

"Very funny. Fine. Don't tell me. No—wait—definitely tell me. Am I going to be upset?"

He wrapped his arm around me and planted an incredibly obnoxious kiss on my right temple. "Oh, sweetheart, I pray to a merciful God that you won't be, but there's never any telling, is there? You might be, and that's the truth. Come on, let's get out of here. I'm starving, and really pretty tired. Defying authority is an exhausting business."

"I hate surprises," I grumbled as we made our way out to the elevators to collect our things from the office. He simply nodded his head and offered me no further explanation beyond a smile and a request to trust him. And I did, so I fought to let it go, hoping that whatever it was that he hid from me wouldn't mean longer separations or more danger but steeling myself against the possibility that it might. He said he hoped I wouldn't be upset. Maybe he was scheming to swap offices with me, using his success in Grozny as leverage. I wouldn't have hesitated to throw my lot in with Kathy and make his life a living hell if that were the case. I stole that office fair and square.

The suits and the PR flacks raked us over the coals the following morning, but nobody could deny that Edward had taken care of the situation with laudable poise and finesse. His little announcement drew the focus back to the news we were reporting, and all of the blogs and tabloids ran pieces about how we were as much in love with our stories as we were with each other. The barracuda and Edward squared off early on in the meeting; she was clearly furious that her directives had been ignored, and he was ruthless in his disregard for her and her tactics. He made absolutely no effort to charm her, which was unusual for him, but I understood he was paying her back for thinking that she had any say whatsoever in the hows and whys of his life.

She ended up storming out of the room with Edward's laughter chasing her, but Peter was made of sterner stuff. "When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong. I was wrong," he admitted, shaking Edward's hand. "Just please don't cut me out of the decision-making loop next time, all right? I can't defend what I'm not privy to, and I really hate looking like I don't have a clue."

Edward put his hand on Peter's shoulder. "That was for your own protection. If you knew about it beforehand, corporate would have blamed you."

"I really like you. I do. But the next time you start making assumptions about what I should and shouldn't be responsible for, I'm going to kick your ass like it's a pebble in the street. Believe it."

"Done," Edward grinned, and Peter slapped him once on the back with more force than I'd ever seen him use. I'm sure he hoped that the impact would cause his message to transmit itself through Edward's muscles and into his brain, but I hoped he wasn't overly optimistic about that.

Before he left, he paused in front of me as well. "Don't think I don't know you were in on it, even if you were the silent partner. I appeal to you as the more adult member of the team. Don't go behind my back again." His gaze encompassed us both. "I can't deny that there are times I long for the days when the two of you could barely stand to be in the same room with each other. Ah, well. Back to work. Edward, we're on for three in my office."

"Later," he answered as Peter nodded on his way out of the conference room, then immediately turned to me to elaborate. "Grozny fallout and visa stuff."

I pulled my lips in and shook my head. "Yeah, that might have worked on me a month ago, but I know you, and there's no way you hand me an explanation like that without any effort on my part. What's really going on?"

"Your suspicious streak is simultaneously annoying and kind of hot."

"Be that as it may, I still don't have an answer."

"No, you don't, do you. Hang in there, though." He chucked me under the chin in a pseudo-supportive fashion, then disappeared behind a portly network executive before I could return the favor with a little more pepper.

We were always busy during the average day, but it became apparent to me sometime around mid-afternoon that Edward was definitely avoiding me. I didn't like it. In my experience, people avoided someone either out of guilt, or out of a desire to avoid sharing unpleasant news. This was always supposing that the person they tried to avoid wasn't someone they didn't like to begin with, and whatever else was going on, I was pretty sure Edward wouldn't have chased a very public declaration of his affection for me with a private realization that he might have been wrong about that.

No; something else was definitely up. Not knowing what it might be was absolutely killing me.

The behavior continued through the day on Tuesday and into Wednesday, and by the time we were on our way over to Le Bernadin, I was completely wound up and ready to jump out of the cab at the next red light.

"Settle down," he admonished me. "I promise you this dinner won't be anything like the Nuremberg Trials."

"What are you not telling me, Edward? I can't function like this. Just drop the bomb already. Put me out of my misery."

Both of his hands closed over mine, and he brought them into his lap. "Just give me one more day, okay? One more day, and I'll tell you what's going on. I want to do this right for a change."

I pulled my hands away from him. "You ask for an awful lot from me, you know that? I think I've been pretty reasonable."

"More than reasonable," he agreed with a grin. "And more than pretty."

"Don't deflect. I just want to know what I'm going to have to deal with. I don't think that's too much to ask."

"Oh, would you look at that—we're here!" He scooted across the rear-seat bench of the cab, dragging his backpack behind him and handing the driver a twenty. He was out of the cab and through the restaurant's revolving door before I could blink, leaving me to wriggle my own way out and after him.

"Jackass," I hissed at him the minute I was free of the revolving door.

"Whatever it was he did, I'm probably on your side," an amused voice next to me observed, and I whipped my head to my left to see Esme, who'd been inspecting some artwork on the wall next to the front doors.

"Perfect. Oh, excellent," I grumbled, and she laughed at me and reached out to link my arm through hers.

"Come on. Let's sit down, and you can tell me all about what the jackass did. I'm sure it was annoying in the extreme. Carlisle's in the kitchen saying hello to Eric, but he'll be out shortly."

Edward snorted, but placed a hand on each of our spines and guided us over to the host to be seated. I took a quick glance at the bar area, but Jake hadn't yet arrived, so I let myself be led over to a table across the dining room and grabbed a seat from which I had a uninterrupted view of the bar.

"Oh, no you don't," Esme corrected him as he moved to take the chair to my right. "That's my seat tonight. You take the one on the other side of her, please." He shrugged and went where she directed him, while she reached for my hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. "Was he being awful on the ride over here? I can't really punish him anymore, of course, but if I put my back into it, I can probably still make him a little uncomfortable for you. I wish I'd thought to bring some naked baby pictures or something."

I couldn't imagine Edward being the least bit embarrassed by a naked picture of himself no matter when it had been taken, but I appreciated her effort to diffuse the tension between us. "No—sorry. He's just being a little...frustrating at the moment. It's nothing."

Edward pulled his napkin into his lap. "You know, I can just leave and let the two of you talk about me in peace if's more convenient. I'm sure you'd love that." The look he gave his mother would have peeled the bark off an oak, but it only made her grin at him fondly, which prompted him to cross his eyes at her and shake his head.

Carlisle slipped into the seat opposite mine with a murmured apology and an outrageously-arched eyebrow. "Isabella. So nice to see you again."

I tried to ignore the understanding laughter in his eyes, which clearly indicated that he'd heard enough of the conversation at the table before he sat down. He'd married Edward's mother, after all, so he was perhaps in the best position to understand how simultaneously infuriating and attractive I found her son.

Our chatter was superficial while we ordered our drinks and dinner, but when the waiter walked away, Esme folded her hands in front of her plate and regarded the pair of us. "So. That was quite a show on Monday. Riveting stuff. I thought for a moment I'd accidentally sat on the remote control and butt-switched over to MTV."

"You watch MTV now?"

"I'm not ancient, and I resent the implication, darling. My generation gave you MTV."

"Yeah, thanks so much for that, by the way," Edward replied, in the least grateful way possible. "You saw the show. You know where things stand. Questions answered. Let's eat."

"Not so fast. I've got a few more questions."

"I've got questions, too," I chipped in, because I did, even though I didn't especially want to ask them in front of his parents. I just wanted to state for the record that not knowing what was brewing in his head made me tense.

"Your questions, I'll answer tomorrow," he informed me before looking over at his mother. "_Your_ questions come with no such guarantee."

Carlisle held up his hands. "I don't want to know anything, really. I'm fine with being surprised by life."

"Thank God for you, then," Edward sighed. "Maybe the two of us should just cut out and eat at the pizza place down the block."

"Escolar," Carlisle reminded him, as though that one word was all the reason he needed to stay right where he was.

"Right. Fine, I'm trapped, but that doesn't mean I'll cooperate."

"Explain this to me, because at the risk of sounding dense, I'm not understanding it at all. You love her, yes?" Esme's gaze held his, demanding a response from him, and he nodded once. "You love her, and yet you're leaving her. By choice. That seems...counter-intuitive."

"Have you met me? You know what I do for a living, right?"

"Don't be so churlish. I just don't understand why you wouldn't want to be in the general vicinity of the person you love."

"Of course I want to be in Bella's general vicinity."

"Well, then?"

Esme Cullen and I had known each other for a grand total of less than one hour if you added up the amount of time she spent in my office and the amount of time we'd spent in the restaurant. Despite our abbreviated acquaintance, she had rapidly become a favorite, because while she embarrassed the hell out of me, she also wasn't afraid to dig in and wait Edward out. That took guts, and I liked guts.

"Can we let this go now? It's really between Bella and myself. If she's all right with it, then it's all right."

"That's the thing. I don't think it _is_ all right with her, even though she'd probably rather have seagulls nibble on her liver than make a big deal out of it. Trust me, I recognize that look; your father wears it around me every day of his life, and I probably wear it around you more often than I want to."

"Seriously, drop it now." He'd gotten more and more tense as she spoke. I could put a certain portion of it down to the fact that he didn't like anyone rooting around in his personal business, but even so, his reaction seemed disproportionate to the circumstances. He'd never let his mother run his agenda for him. The only conclusion I could draw from his reaction was that the news he had to share with me was even more unpleasant than I'd feared. Maybe he'd pressured Peter to let him out of his contract early. Maybe he'd bargained to go out in the field more often and start the transition away from the desk sooner than originally planned.

My heart dropped at the prospect, and all desire to eat or chat or enjoy myself that evening disappeared.

"Look at her face," Esme commanded Edward. "Look at her face, and then tell me I should drop it. Oh, my God, she was right: I raised a jackass. Carlisle, how could you let me do that?"

Edward ducked his head down to find my eyes, which were trained on the charger plate in front of me. When I noticed the motion, I did my best to raise my head and assemble my expression into something calm and accepting, but I wasn't at all confident that I succeeded in the mission. He looked extremely irritated, and even though I knew he wasn't irritated with me, I didn't want to be even peripherally responsible for making him feel that way. I understood him. I got it, even though I didn't want to, and even if he left tomorrow, I'd figure out a way to make this work for us.

The noise he made after studying my face was somewhere between a snarl and a laugh. "I should have caught malaria or come down with miner's lung this afternoon. This is what I get for trying to be a good guy for a change." He swept his hand behind him and grabbed the shoulder strap of his backpack off of the rear of his chair. "Mother, when you reflect on the work you've done this evening, I hope you're proud of yourself for ruining what might very well turn out to be the only remotely romantic gesture I ever make in my life." He fished around in his backpack for a moment while we all goggled at him, then extracted a manila folder, which he dropped onto my empty plate. "Here."

"What's this?"

"Jesus, just open it. I was going to wrap it—or at least I was going to _think_ about wrapping it before I remembered that I don't have wrapping paper or tape or anything. But here. Open it."

Lifting an unsure hand, I worked my fingers under the top of the folder and pushed it back to reveal a sheaf of papers stapled together at the top-left corner. I turned my eyes toward his again, but he only exhaled impatiently and gestured toward the papers, clearly wanting me to read them, so I tried to focus my attention on the document.

"It's your contract?" I guessed after glossing over the top page and seeing his name and all of the network information.

"Well, it's my _new_ contract. Maybe. If you agree that it's a good idea." He took my hand, which had been hovering over the top of the folder to keep it from flapping back down. "You said you'd think a little less if I left a little less. So I'm leaving a little less." He used our joined hands to push back the top of the folder again, and then reached his other hand across to flip over the top page and point at some lines on the contract. "See? It's for the whole year, same as yours, with an option to renew as a joint decision between us."

"Oh. _Oh_." Tears clouded my vision, making the black words in front of me shimmer and blur. Everything inside of me unraveled, and all the tension in my muscles evaporated, leaving only a choking joy in its place. "But you said it would kill you to sit behind a desk."

He squinted down at me. "To be honest, it hasn't been as painful as I thought it would be, which may or may not have something to do with my company. But listen up, and listen good: if something really big happens out there, if something blows up or burns down or starts fighting or goes missing—"

"—you and your duffel bag and your lucky shirt will be on the next flight out to cover it, right?" I finished for him, and he grinned at me. "I can live with that, as long as you come back to me when it's over."

"I can't promise to smell really good when I do, but you know I'll do my best."

"I know you will." And then I had to kiss him, so I did, and as his smile curved into my lips I realized that once again, we were making out in a restaurant. We would have continued to do so, probably, but his mother's strangled exclamation reminded us that, as usual, we weren't alone.

"You're a genius," she breathed as she reclaimed my hand. "You got him to stay. He never stays, but you got him to stay. How on earth did you do that?"

He answered her without breaking his gaze from mine, his face a whole novel of pride, and happiness, and at long last, complete respect. "She got me to stay because she never once asked me to." Then he lowered his mouth to my ear, his words not meant for general consumption. "Sorry. I really wanted to do this without an audience. I had a whole thing planned for tomorrow night when we were alone. It involved giving you this, and then getting extremely naked. Okay, that was pretty much the whole plan, but sadly we'll have to postpone the best part."

"I'm completely screwed anyway," I whispered back. "If I tell you this was the best part, it's like I'm second-rating the nudity, and that would make me a liar, too. Thank you."

As I pulled my head away, a vaguely familiar movement in the distance caught my eye. "Jake's here," I announced, poking Edward gently in the ribs.

He looked across the restaurant and nodded as we watched the handsome physicist take a seat at the bar. "Get going."

"Please don't hold dinner on my account. I'm so sorry; I'll be back as soon as I can," I apologized to Esme and Carlisle as I pushed my chair out and stood up, placing my unused napkin next to my plate.

"Wait—now he's staying, and you're going? I don't like this any better than the other way around." The dismay and confusion on Esme's face would have been comical if I didn't feel so badly about ducking out at that delicate moment, but I had no choice. I tried to communicate my regret with a frown, but Edward pushed my hip with his elbow in an effort to remind me to get on with it, the devil dancing in his eyes.

"She's got another date, mom. I'm pretty sure when she's done with him, she'll be back here for dessert."

"Maybe I _am_ ancient, after all, because that doesn't seem right."

"I wouldn't have it any other way." He waved me off again, so I wove my way through the crowded dining room and tapped Jake's shoulder when I reached him at the bar.

"Hey."

He swiveled around to face me. "Hey. In case I haven't already mentioned it, I hate this. It's nice to see you, though. Have a seat."

I grabbed the stool next to him and motioned to the bartender to order our drinks. "Thanks for coming, Jake. Not to put too much pressure on you or anything, but you're my only hope of figuring out what's going on."

He grimaced, but didn't argue the point. "I'm surprised you showed up without your shadow."

My thumb pointed the way across the room to where Edward sat with his parents, and Jake shook his head over his scotch. "Figures. Let's get on with it, then. I want to catch the nine-seventeen out of Penn Station."

I spent the next half-hour telling him exactly what had happened during our trip to Geneva, sparing no detail and letting him know precisely how odd and "off" Aro seemed to both of us. When I reached the point in the narrative at which I had to share the goings-on at the private club, Jake's eyes grew wide and he exhaled a disbelieving breath. "Psycho. Listen, everyone knows that he's got a screw or twenty loose. That's not news, Bella. But he's beyond brilliant and the program is thrilled to have him at any cost. Felix went through MIT with me; we still talk, and I'm pretty sure he'd tell me if something really bad was going on."

"Maybe he doesn't know. Maybe he suspects something, but he's afraid to say anything for the same reasons you're afraid to be involved in this. He's in the same small world you're in, and if everyone at CERN is so in love with Castiglione, maybe he doesn't want to hold his hand up and voice a dissenting opinion." I fiddled with the stem of my wine glass as I mulled the situation over. "Aro told me that all of the data they collect goes through him before it's compiled. Could he be doing something bad with the numbers? Is there any way that rigging the results would compromise the collider?"

Jake shook his head again. "I don't see how. I mean, I suppose he could alter the results in the data to hide information, but that wouldn't be dangerous at all."

"The whole place is essentially run by computers though, right? If you're right, and the experiments aren't capable of creating massive destruction, what is? What would have to happen for the place to blow up?"

He scrubbed his hands across his face. "I don't know. Earthquake? Bomb? It's a big project, but when you get down to brass tacks, it's all pretty simple. Big tunnel, shaped like a racetrack. Six hundred million proton collisions per second, all recorded by electronic trigger systems. The collisions are so fast and so small that the triggers are the only way we can even tell they're happening."

"Six hundred million collisions per second?" The number was incredible to me. Six hundred million ways for this to go wrong, and I didn't have a clue where to look for an answer. I really wanted to forget all about CERN, and particle accelerators, and creepy computer geniuses. I wanted to go back to believing that there was a girl named Alice hiding in the Alps somewhere, building a nuclear device out of mountain flowers and lederhosen and Ricola cough drops, back to the hour before we first ran that stupid report from Brookhaven and we made the initial connection between the dream and CERN.

And then something occurred to me. Some small, throwaway fact from that report crawled back into my head.

"Hey, Jake? When the protons collide, the heat is really intense, right? Isn't it thousands of times hotter than the sun?"

"Yeah, sure. We use a rough estimate of 100,000 times hotter than the sun, but since we can only estimate the heat of the sun, we might be off on that. Still, any way you slice it, it's really, really hot. Why?"

A knot formed in my stomach, taking hold of the empty space where dinner should have rested and growing tendrils that wrapped around my heart. "How is all that heat controlled?"

He smiled. "Oh, come on. The collisions are so small, and so quick. The collider is cooled with superfluid helium in a cryogenic distribution system. It's colder than outer space in the accelerator to compensate for the heat the collisions generate."

"Okay, but what controls the—what did you call it?—the cryogenic distribution system?"

I could mark the moment he realized where I was going, because for the first time since I met him, his spine stiffened and he looked like a man who was taking what I had to say very, very seriously.

"There are pipes throughout the system, all filled with helium at different temperatures. The system is run by the distribution computer."

"What would happen if someone disabled the distribution computer?"

He looked at me for a moment, disbelief and concern at war in his eyes. "Not good things. Very not good things."

# # #

A/N - Hi there. I hope you all trust that there aren't many things that would keep me from updating this for so long, but that several of the things on that list have actually happened over the past few months, and my attention needed to be focused elsewhere for a spell. I'm back, though!

Thanks, as always, to Ser (littlesecret84) and Tracy (ciao_bella27) for reading this through before it gets to you. They're just so good to me, and I'm lucky to know them.

I think I need to stop writing about things like EF5 tornadoes in the heartland and hostage crises in Chechnya, because those things have a disturbing habit of happening in the real world. As a result, my next story will concentrate on world peace, a cure for cancer, and fat-free, full-flavor bacon (Edward will invent this, because it will make him the most perfect and beautiful Edward ever). To the residents of Joplin, MO, Tuscaloosa, AL, and other devastated communities, my heart and my thoughts go out to you. I would also like to recognize reporters like the late Tim Hetherington and the late Chris Hondros, who were killed while covering the uprising in Libya, CBS' Lara Logan, who was assaulted in Tahrir Square, and the team of NY Times reporters who were kidnapped and terrorized in Libya. Reportage is a scary, messy business, and these people are brave enough and crazy enough to go out there armed with nothing more than a camera and a notepad to bring us the view from the ground. The good ones make it look so easy, when it's really anything but.

Thank you all for sticking with me, and for continuing to recommend and read and review this story. No matter where I run off to, I'll always come home to you. And I never smell like a goat, either, so at least I have that over NewsFox. Push the button and yell at me for going AWOL if you'd like.


	24. Occam's Sharp Thing

# # #

Occam's Sharp Thing

Edward was all mock outrage when I filled him in.

"Are you telling me I cared about scientific theories for no reason? That galls me. What an incredible waste of my brain cells."

"Can you please be serious?" I hissed. It had been absolute torture to wait until our dessert with his parents was finished, but we were finally curbside and I was desperately trying to flag down an empty, on-duty cab. "People are still going to die if we don't get to the bottom of this before next week."

He gently pushed my arm down and raised his own instead, wiggling his ridiculous fingers in the frosty air. Five seconds later, a shiny new medallion slid to a stop in front of us, making me huff in exasperation and making him grin and tilt his smug face down as he opened the door and invited me to get in before him.

"Don't even pretend I didn't prime the cab karma for you," I warned him.

The cab driver half-turned toward the rear seat and spoke through the hole in the plexiglass divider. "Where to?"

"Take us to the nearest convenient underground bunker, please," Edward deadpanned.

"Stop it. Sixty-eighth and Second, northeast corner." The driver nodded at me and punched the meter.

"Bella, I'm in a really good mood right now. Let's not spoil it with talk about things blowing up, okay? I just handed you my future in a manila folder. That's kind of a big deal for me. I was hoping to celebrate it with a little more, oh, I don't know...indecency. To be blunt, blowing might have made the list, but blowing something _up_ wasn't on the agenda in my mind." He leaned over to murmur in my ear. "We've got a whole week. Plenty of time to save the world. Let's take the night off."

"How am I supposed to relax when there's a very good chance that the lunatic is planning to blow up the tunnel?"

His body slid over to trap me between him and the cab door. "Is that a challenge? Because it sounded like a challenge. And I do love a challenge."

If anyone on the planet had been capable of distracting me at that moment, it would have been Edward, and he knew it. The only question was whether or not I was willing to let myself be distracted.

I thought back to what he'd said when he was making his grand on-air announcement about the state of things between us. He'd asked the viewing audience to separate who we were from what we did. And I realized that I needed to do a better job of that as well. He was all in; I had the documents to prove it. CERN would still be there tomorrow, and for at least the following week. I had Edward now, and it would be the grossest sort of stupidity for me to waste a precious second of time with him.

Leaning back into him, I rubbed my nose against his jaw. "You know what? You're right. That's something to worry about tomorrow. Tonight is about you. And me. And nicer things."

He pulled his head back in surprise. "Hello, who are you? I don't think we've met. I'm looking for the girl who can't spell 'vacation'."

"Oh, I can spell it, all right. I can spell it just fine. Maybe I never had anywhere interesting enough to want to visit before now."

His low hum vibrated against my ear as I wrapped my arms around him. "I see."

"You're really staying."

"For you, yes. With you, yes."

"That's pretty amazing."

Edward lifted his hands and turned them so that his fingers were pointed at his chest, a silent indication that since we were talking about him, the word "amazing" was a given.

"Would you and your ego would like some privacy? I'm sure the driver will let me ride up front. Maybe he wants to talk about things blowing up." The effect of my teasing was likely lessened by the fact that my grip on him increased.

"Tomorrow," he promised, and I nodded against his shoulder. The cab dropped us off on the corner of my block, and we hustled ourselves out of the chilly night and into the warm, softly-lit lobby.

"I like this building," he observed as we were waiting for the elevator. "Your place is too small, but I like this building. You should think about getting something bigger here."

"I should?"

He shrugged, staring up at the numbers lighting up in descending order above the elevator door. "Sure. I mean, you can afford it, right? If you _really_ want to be frugal, I'll bet you could even find a roommate to split the costs with."

"Thanks for calling me cheap. Yes, it would definitely be all about saving money for me. I'm very practical like that." My lungs were suddenly too full of air, and had forgotten what to do with it all.

"It'd have to have at least two bedrooms," he continued, knowing we were on the same scary page. "I'm pretty sure any roommate of yours would need somewhere to escape when a break from your gears was imperative. Or if, say, there was a sudden need for an open space lined with a good hardwood floor. For dancing, or pacing, or whatnot."

"Not to mention the fact that any roommate of mine would probably be expecting to have a separate room to sleep in."

"I wouldn't count on that, actually. In fact, I'm confident you're dead wrong on that one."

"My roommate sounds kind of obnoxious."

He nodded his agreement and stuck his hand between the opening elevator doors to let me enter first. "He probably is. I don't think it slows him down any, though. His sublet is up in February. And for the record, he likes a lot of windows, but will be more than satisfied with whatever the space looks like as long as you're going to be there."

The prospect of having him with me, of both working and living alongside him, was so dizzying that I momentarily lost my ability to think straight. "Really? You really want to try this?"

"Bella, I don't spend a lot of time looking in my rearview mirror. Weren't you the one who was going on and on about not being a test drive? We said the love thing already. Let's do this and see if it works."

"Bombs away," I whispered, and he laughed at me.

"You wanted to talk about explosions." His body shifted closer to mine as the elevator car swayed to a stop on my floor. "There; are you sufficiently distracted? Let's see what else we can make you forget about."

"Man, when you do a thing, you really do it, don't you."

He lifted my keys from my palm and fitted the biggest one into the lock on my front door. "Come on. Let's go inside and pretend we're on a spaceship for the next few hours. I don't want to talk, or think, or plan anything at all. I just want to be with you."

And for once, for once I was smart enough to just shut up, because I wanted exactly what he wanted. I pushed him through the door before me, stifling a laugh as I watched him lose his balance at the unexpected pressure. "So get out of the hallway and be with me, then."

True to my word, I let myself get lost in him for the rest of the night, and did so without a single regret. I didn't say it, but the fear of leaving myself behind and forgetting everything that was important to me in the face of this thing between us had eased with the knowledge that he was willing to alter what had always been most important to him. This was a compromise I could live with, because it was a compromise of equals.

When rude dawn broke through our happy exhaustion, the peaceful, naked spaceship landed and my mind once again focused on Geneva. Every instinct I possessed latched onto the possibility that Castiglione was going to try to rig the helium regulator to fail, and I pelted Edward with random thoughts about it until he abandoned his attempt to shave and grabbed me firmly by my shoulders.

"Jesus, you're like a schnauzer off the leash when the fever hits you. I get it. I agree that it makes sense, if there's anything like sense to be found in this whole situation. Talk in a straight line. What are our assets? What are we working with?"

I ticked the items off as they occurred to me. "Well, Jake, obviously. Enough time to stop it before it happens. Alice?"

"Maybe," he agreed, picking up his razor and returning to the task of deforesting his stubborn jaw. "Hang on—didn't Jake say something about knowing Felix?"

I nodded at his reflection while my teeth worried my upper lip. "Mmmhmm. They went to school together—M.I.T., I think he said. You saw how weird he is, though, and Jake says he's sure Felix would have given him a clue if he knew that something really bad was happening."

"Maybe he's scared to. Maybe he's being blackmailed. I can think of a whole lot of maybes where the freak is concerned."

"See? That's what _I_ said. But Jake was pretty adamant that Felix would care more about the project than about himself."

Edward ran his razor under the faucet. "Then Jake's a cockeyed optimist. Those science guys aren't fit for any other racket. Besides, where the hell would he go if he were kicked out of CERN? Anywhere else would be complete failure and humiliation."

I wiped a stray bit of shaving cream off of his neck. "What we need is an option for him. An attractive option. Maybe if we can give him that, he'll be more interested in telling us what he knows."

"Brookhaven?"

"I'll call Jake when we get to the office."

The phone call was something south of easy. "Come _on_. You can't be serious! Why are you torturing me? What did I ever do to deserve this?"

"You tapped me on the shoulder," I reminded him, and he groaned.

"Worst move ever. You're a box full of snakes."

It was the second time in the span of about an hour that a man had compared me to an unpleasant animal, and I did my best to accept it as a testament to my tenacity. "Yes. Yes, I am. But I'm not poisonous, and you know this is really important or I wouldn't be bothering you. Can you do something for him?"

He sighed. "I don't know. Give me a day to figure it out. This is really stupid. He'll want something good, and the budget is...well, yeah. Shut up and get it done, Jake, right? You don't want to hear this."

"I'm sorry. You've been nothing short of wonderful to me, and all I do is push you for more. You're a really great —"

"Stop," he cut me off abruptly. "Just stop. Whatever you're going to say is not going to make me feel any better about anything, so just stop. I'll get back to you."

"I'm lucky you like me."

"_Liked_ you."

"Don't be mean. Call me back, please."

He offered me a disgruntled grunt in response, and hung up without any formal goodbye. I sent a wayward prayer up to the heavens that somewhere out there lurked a gorgeous lady scientist who would make that man as happy as I was, then gathered my notes to slog through the morning planning meeting and get on with my day.

Rose appeared uncharacteristically ruffled when I ran down to the studio for the pre-show prep later that afternoon. The place was dark; none of the studio lights were hot, and only the control booth lights were on. She was standing on the short staircase that led up to the booth, left hand on her hip, right hand holding her forehead.

"You okay?"

She nodded, giving her forehead a little slap before straightening up to look at me. "Fine, yeah. Are you here for Victor? He moved the meeting up to the small conference room on seventeen because engineering was _supposed_ to be down here working on the backup deck in the control room. It crapped out last night."

"Gee, how thoughtful of someone to let me know. And now I'm ten minutes late, even though I'm on time."

Whatever response she might have made was swallowed by the sound of the studio door opening again, and we turned our heads in unison to see the bright fluorescent hallway lights illuminating Emmett's familiar shape.

A frustrated growl escaped from Rose's mouth, while I silently cursed whoever it was in Victor's office who'd neglected to send me word that the meeting had been moved.

"Will you please just quit it? I don't want to have to ban you from the floor, but I'll do it in a heartbeat if you keep this up."

He loped into the room like he owned it and made his way over to the staircase, but I knew him well enough to see the uncertainty and regret in his eyes no matter how much of an effort he made to cover it with swagger.

"Hey, put away your taser, gorgeous. I'm just here to collect Bella, because the texts I left her aren't doing much good with her phone on her desk."

"Oh."

That made him smile a little, and the smile was a surprisingly tender one. "Disappointed? I'll take it." He leaned toward her, startling her and prompting her to lean back. "And if you banned me from the floor, I'd just buy some suction cups and crawl around on the ceiling."

"If the texts you send her are anything like the texts you send me, I wouldn't blame her for throwing her phone out the window."

He heaved an exasperated sigh. "Look, I told you that was an accident. Stupid autocorrect. I meant to type 'gum'. I'll be like _gum_ on the bottom of your shoe, Rose. My fingers are too big for that little keyboard. Why the hell would I send you a text like that if I was working to get past this whole thing with us? Use your head. Take pity on me and my big, big hands." His request was followed by the most exaggerated and comical pout I'd ever seen on any face, anywhere.

She lifted her arm and waved it toward the door, but I could see that she was struggling to contain a smile of her own. "Right. Get out. Just get out."

Pointing out to Rose that he could just as easily have called the control room to find me seemed a little bit unfair, so I played my part in the charade and let him usher me out of the studio.

"You're trying to irritate her into giving you another chance?" I guessed as we waited for the elevator to whisk us up to seventeen.

"I'm taking a page out of Cullen's playbook. Doesn't look like it hurt his chances any with you."

"Yeah, well, Rose isn't me."

"Thank God."

I flicked his bicep. "Be careful. You're really pushy."

He nodded, but I suspected that the nod was more in agreement that he was pushy than it was an acknowledgement that the woman deserved some breathing room. Emmett was overwhelming on his best behavior; I didn't like her chances of holding out on him forever.

When a ringing telephone once again woke me out of a dead sleep in the middle of that night, in the middle of Edward's bed, my knee-jerk reaction was disoriented panic that I'd have to watch him pack up and jet off to somewhere awful, where awful people were doing awful things to each other.

"Yours," he grunted in my ear while my sleepy mind lurched through that whole scenario, and this made no sense at all to me because I wasn't the one who had a lucky shirt with a collar full of tricky plastic tools.

"Can't be. It's you."

That earned me a helpful kick in the shin. "You," he insisted with a yawn. "Want me to get it?"

"Ugh. Stop." My hand fumbled around on the top of the nightstand, and I managed to pick up the call before the fourth unanswered ring sent the caller to voicemail.

"It's Bella. What?"

There was only silence on the other end of the line, but I could hear the faint sound of someone breathing.

"Listen, freak. Lose this number, or I'll make sure you spend the rest of your life wishing you h—"

A vaguely familiar male voice quietly interrupted my rant. "Ms. Swan?"

"What? Who is this?"

More silence followed, and then the voice whispered, "We met in Geneva."

My nerve endings lit up like the Macy's fireworks spectacular over the East River. "Felix? Is this Felix? It's you, right? Don't—just don't hang up. Please. _Please_ don't hang up."

"Jacob Black gave me your number. I'm just...I called to tell you that I can't speak to you. I have nothing to tell you."

"You called me. You're already talking to me."

He exhaled a nervous laugh. "It's not that simple."

Shaking my head to rid myself of any lingering drowsiness, I sat up and crossed my legs while Edward switched on the reading lamp and pushed himself up to lean against the headboard next to me.

"You can trust me. Talk to me."

"I can't trust anyone."

"Felix, let me help you." I kept my voice as quiet as his. "Did Jake tell you what I think? Am I right? It's the helium regulator, right? He's planning on doing something to it, isn't he?"

Another shaky laugh sounded in my ear. "How do you know these things? I don't know. I'm not sure, but I think...I don't know. I can't talk. What if this is a trick? I know you went out with him. It's a test. He's testing me."

Oh, I wanted to be in front of him. I wanted him to look into my eyes and see that I was telling him the truth, and that he had no reason to fear me. This was so much more difficult to do over the phone, where the space between us and the lack of visual cues provided fertile soil for suspicion and mistrust to take root and grow. I was impatient for the trust, and that was the very last thing I needed to be at that moment.

Forcing myself to calm down, I loosened my death grip on the phone and took a deep breath. "I'm not working with Aro. I don't know him. I don't like him, and the only reason I went to Geneva in the first place was because someone I care about had a dream that something bad was going to happen. Her name is Alice. _Alice_. I'm flying blind, here, Felix. All I have are theories. All I want to do is stop this before someone gets hurt. If you're not on board with that—if you're in this with him—then you can hang up and I'll figure it out on my own. Just know that when I take him down, you'll be right behind him."

This bluff-calling was met with yet another block of silence on the other end, and I could practically feel him weighing his options. While he did that, a part of my brain was busy marveling at the fact that Jake had called him to try and get him to cooperate all by himself. It choked me up, because I knew he'd done that for my sake, and for Felix's sake, and for the sake of the science he loved so much. What didn't I owe that man in this situation?

"I'm scared," Felix finally admitted, sounding angry, and lost, and not at all unlike a frightened boy.

"Me, too. Have you told anyone over there anything?"

He cleared his throat. "No. Listen, I really can't talk right now. I'm due at work in fifteen minutes."

Desperate not to lose him, I scrambled for a toehold in the conversation. "I understand. Hey, are you due to work over the weekend? It's Friday. Are you up for a quick trip to the States? Your family's here, right? Maybe you can visit with them."

"I can't fly home for two days. That's crazy, not to mention they don't pay us the kind of salary that would make last-minute plane tickets a good idea. Geneva's expensive enough on what I make."

"I've seen your car," I smiled through the phone line, hoping to lighten the mood a bit and relieve some of the tension between us. "I'll pay. My treat. You don't even have to meet up with me if you don't want to."

"There's no way I can accept that from you."

"Consider it a random act of holiday kindness. They pay me well here, and you'd owe me nothing—not your loyalty, not a meeting, nothing—except a phone call during which you can say whatever you feel comfortable saying."

"And if I don't call you? What then?"

I sighed. "I can't force you to do anything, Felix. I can only tell you what I'm trying to do, and hope like hell you'll help me. You're in control."

"I'll think about it and call you back in a few hours," he offered, and I knew that I couldn't let him off the line without nailing him down.

"No. The offer's open as long as we're on this call. Once you hang up, it's off the table, and I'll have to figure out another way to get Castiglione. Now or never. Decide."

"Jake says he trusts you. Can I trust you?" His voice was begging me to tell him that he could. I thought back to one of the earliest conversations Edward and I had ever had, about people wanting to talk, to tell their stories, and I knew that I had him. Felix would tell me his story.

"Yes. You can trust me. But whether you decide to or not is up to you."

Before he could even answer me, I heard Edward dialing his phone. "Tanya," he whispered so quietly that it was little more than a breath. "Get his details so she can book the flight."

Felix's struggle sounded its death rattle. "I don't know what to do. Everything I do will be the wrong thing."

"I can't protect you if you don't work with me. I'm not interested in embarrassing the program; I just want to stop this before people get hurt. And Felix, you need to believe that people will get hurt. This isn't just about the collider. It's about the lives of people you work with. You want to explain to them—to their families—that you could have helped, but didn't?"

His answer was quiet, full of defeat and exhaustion. "All right. I'll do it."

I nodded in relief, and for the first time since the start of the phone call, I felt Edward's hand on my back. This small thing, the fact that he knew enough not to touch me or distract me while I was concentrating on getting Felix to cooperate, spoke love and understanding so loudly that it made me cover my receiver and lean over to give him a quick kiss. He responded by raising an eyebrow at me and nodding toward the phone at my ear, a reminder that he was still waiting for the details to book the flight.

We wrapped up the phone calls after Felix supplied his name and passport information and we'd agreed on an itinerary, and then I took a moment to do a little victory wiggle where I sat.

"We're in business," I grinned as I settled back down on my pillow, and he turned off the light and hauled me over to his side of the bed.

"You were fantastic. Get some sleep." His arm curled around me, pinning me securely against his chest as his chin came to rest on my shoulder. "I love being on your team."

"You _are_ my team," I whispered back to him without turning my head, stupid with success and gratitude. "I learned from the best."

"I learn from you, too. Of course, exactly _what_ I learn from you isn't something I'll do a whole lot of in an interview. Probably."

His hand bounced against my stomach as I laughed. "Don't qualify that unless you want to sleep on the floor."

"Mmm, no. I'm fine right here."

"You're perfect right here," I corrected him, squeezing his hand and sighing as I drifted back into the warm darkness for the next few hours.

I spent most of the early morning on Friday vacillating between confident belief that Felix would step off the plane at JFK that evening as arranged, and nail-biting fear that he'd chicken out at the last minute, leaving me stuck at square one with no time left on the clock to stop whatever was going to happen in Geneva the following week.

To distract myself, I called Alice and updated her on the events of the previous night.

"Do you want to be on the call with him?"

"Of course I do, but he won't call," she answered with conviction, and my heart dropped until she continued. "Well, he'll call, but he'll want to do this in person. The sooner, the better, too."

"You dreamed this?"

Her amused snort tickled my ear through the receiver. "No, stupid. Think about your conversation with him. It's obvious. He's way too paranoid to do this any other way, because he won't want there to be a chance you'll record it and use it against him. God, B. We need someplace kind of public, but really quiet. Somewhere that'll be open late. Somewhere comfortable and a little dark. Somewhere with alcohol, and lots of it. You should invite Jake, too."

"Is Jasper joining us?"

"Duh."

"Okay. Your job is figuring out where we'll go if he wants to meet up. His plane lands a little past seven, and his folks live somewhere in Fairfield, Connecticut. I've got actual stuff I need to do right now."

"This is exciting," she giggled. "Like a party, if you ignore the thing about people getting hurt and all."

"Oh, yeah, let's totally ignore that bit. It's such a buzzkill." I was thrilled to hear the humor in her tone, but also terrified that her complete faith in my ability to avert catastrophe might have been misplaced. I'd never been able to solve her problems before they morphed from dream to all-too-real reality. I'd always failed her. Why she continued to believe I'd make it all better was a total mystery to me, but I wasn't about to stop shooting for that distant star.

"It's not me, B," she whispered, as though I'd spoken my thoughts out loud. "I can laugh about it a little because it's some other Alice. As long as it's not me, I know you can stop it. Don't you see? I know you could never hurt me, and you'd have to hurt me if I was the one who was going to make this happen. So I'm not worried anymore. He'll talk, and you'll fix it."

"What if he doesn't? What if I can't get him to talk?"

"Please. It's you. He'll talk. Go do whatever, and I'll text you with a place when I figure it out." With that, she shooed me off the phone, and I did my best to stop obsessing over things beyond my control. Less than an hour after I hung up with Alice, the newsroom erupted with reports of a series of car bomb attacks in Baghdad, and we all scrambled to run down sources. Edward disappeared into his office, and while I heard him talking on his phone, he was jabbering away in what I could only assume was Kurdish or Arabic with someone on the other end of the line.

Hundreds of people were either killed or injured, and the attacks appeared to have targeted government buildings. The two crews we had in-country managed to bob and weave their ways through hastily-erected barricades and were feeding us footage via satellite, the images gruesome and chaotic.

"Ah, that awkward moment when you realize that 'mission accomplished' wasn't really an accurate assessment of your progress," Emmett sighed, tossing me some notes from the state department briefing. "Hey, we're all going out to that new place on Columbus tonight. You in? They'll apparently deep-fry anything you bring them. The guys are cleaning out their desks, and there's money on whoever finds the strangest thing. It's a secret ballot. I think Newton's bringing socks."

When I hesitated for a moment, his eyes locked on mine. "Come on, you two have to come up for air sometime. Or...wait. That's not a sex vibe you've got going on, Swan. What gives?"

"Shut up about sex vibes. I've just got other plans."

"I smell intrigue. Deep-fried intrigue. Talk." He planted himself in his favorite chair and crossed his arms.

We stared at each other for a moment, neither one of us willing to give an inch. When I refused to answer him, a slow smile inched its way across his face. "Fine, be that way. I'm only your producer, right? I guess I'll just have to tail you. You know, make sure you don't need any help or anything."

I gave him an eyebrow. "You make me sad. You really do. We're just meeting my friend and her new boyfriend for drinks at a place downtown."

"Yeah? Cool. Count me in."

"Not this time. He's shy."

"Shy people love me. I'm their god. Give me the deets."

I opened my mouth to answer him just as Edward poked his head through my door. "You busy? We've got that stupid thing with corporate in five minutes, but I'm certainly not opposed to blowing it off. Give me any excuse, no matter how small." He studied both my face and Emmett's, and his brow furrowed. "What?"

"She won't let me tag along on your drinky date tonight," Emmett tattled. "Why is that?"

Edward shook his head in confusion. "Are we drinking tonight? I mean, fine, but I'm not wearing my drinking shoes."

I let my forehead drop until it hit the top of my desk with a dull thud. "Fuck."

"Ah, now _those_ shoes are a totally different story. I never leave home without them," Edward replied, entering my office and closing the door behind him. "Want to tell me what's going on?"

"Yay, he doesn't know, either. This is getting good. Pull up a stool, Cullen."

The gust of air I expelled from my nostrils was strong enough to riffle the papers in front of me as I lifted my head again and fixed Edward with a meaningful stare. "I was just telling Emmett that my friend Alice and her new boyfriend wanted to join us for drinks tonight. _Alice_ thinks we should definitely get together. Tonight. She has very strong _feelings_ on the subject."

He tilted his head at me, absorbing the ridiculous way I tried to communicate this information while making it sound as though we were setting up a very kinky four-way, before he shrugged. "Really? Okay, then. Might as well let him in on things. Tanya's already involved, even if she has no idea she is. Fair is fair, and they might be useful."

Emmett was immediately put out. "The Russian knows something I don't? That's just balls."

"This isn't about work, Em. This is a personal thing."

"Are you telling me we're not friends? I can do personal. But if you don't trust me then screw you, frankly. And screw you twice for thinking I should share personal shit with you when you're not about the reach-around."

"A seriously disturbing visual," Edward frowned, placing himself between Emmett and myself and looking at the two of us before focusing on me. "Think about what Emmett and Tanya are best at. They arrange things. I know you trust him as much as I trust her. We've done just about everything we can do, and if he talks, we'll need their help."

Emmett was glaring at me while Edward spoke, and I realized that he was genuinely hurt and offended that I hadn't included him in whatever was going on. "Listen, I'm sorry. This whole situation is so crazy, and I didn't want to drag anyone into it. The only reason Edward knows anything about it is because he happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. But if you promise not to judge out loud, I'll tell you everything."

His arms slowly uncrossed while I unraveled the tangled story for him, sparing no detail. When I reached the end, he grunted softly. "Think you can get him to talk on camera? That's a hell of a scoop if it's true."

"No. _No_. I made a promise to Jake. All of this is off the record. We just need to stop it before anyone gets hurt."

He nodded his understanding. "Your story, your call, I guess, even though it feels like a crime to hush this up. What do you need?"

"I'm not really sure yet. I don't know what he'll fell like saying, or what he'll want when he's done talking. So if you want to come along tonight, if he agrees to meet me, you'll need to really fade into the woodwork until I give you the high sign. He sounds really spooked. I'm scared that if I overwhelm him up front, he'll run like a jackrabbit and I'll never get him back on the hook."

"I'd like to meet the guy who could slip past the four of us. He hasn't been born yet."

"Em, now is not Hondo time. Please don't be Hondo. It's definitely a Hondo-free situation."

"Fine. But I'm a great Hondo, and you know it. Want me to get the Russian in here so you can bring her up to date, too?"

"I'll get her," Edward offered. "On the plus side, we get out of the corporate thing this way. I'll just go out there and look super-serious, like we're working on something massive and can't be bothered. And then I'll tell them that we really can't talk about it, just to drive them crazy. Because I can, and I enjoy that." He disappeared through the door, almost tripping on Kathy, who was clearly on the verge of bursting into my office whether we wanted her to or not.

When he'd gone, I turned back to Emmett and shook my head at him. "Stop. Would you please stop calling her 'the Russian'? She has a name."

He stood up and stretched his intimidating limbs. "See that? You miss the point. I like it when you call me 'Hondo'. She likes it when I call her 'the Russian'. What's wrong with a nickname? Nicknames are how you let people know they got through the bullshit layer with you. Unless the nickname is really nasty and they only use it behind your back, in which case they've probably doubled the bullshit layer and put some barbed wire at the top there."

His observation reminded me of how outraged I'd been when Edward called me 'sweetheart'. I'd always assumed it was meant to insult me, but evidence now in hand suggested he was using it as a way to mock himself for having thought about me for five years before we'd ever even met. I felt myself flush with pleasure at the thought that our love story had had such a long lead time.

Once the troops were assembled and updated, and I'd made a call to Jake to thank him and let him know he should join us if Felix wanted to meet up, all I could do was wait to hear from the man himself. Everyone else was still focused on Baghdad, so I scooped up three additional pieces that had been abandoned in the fray and just wrapped them up in case we needed options for the rundown. None of them were particularly hard-hitting, which was why they'd been left behind, but I knew that Victor liked the balance if he could get it.

The day flew away from me on frantic wings while I scrambled to put the stories to bed, forcing myself to concentrate on the things I could control. Edward did his best to distract me during the broadcast, deliberately drawing me into an ad hoc debate over the Amanda Knox verdict and circumstantial evidence, all but demanding that I adopt the pro position on reason and logic winning out while he stubbornly clung to the position that systems of justice in foreign countries needed to be valued on their face and not compared to our own judicial standards.

"You sounded like some kind of zealot back there," I whispered to him during the break. "What's that about?"

He shrugged. "I like arguing with you. But also, I don't think we have any right whatsoever to tell a sovereign nation how to run their courts, provided there's no abuse involved. It sucks, but if we expect people to respect our judicial process, we need to respect theirs right back. It's not like we don't have a few innocent people sitting in our own jails, even if they're not cute white girls."

"Well, you know I feel the same way."

"I know," he grinned. "But you're better at being reasonable than I am."

Seven o'clock turned into eight and then nine o'clock, and found us eating take-out with Emmett and Tanya in the empty conference room where we spent our early days of forced interaction. The newsroom had slowed to its customary weekend crawl, the boys in the bullpen having long since abandoned their posts to get busy with the deep-fry contest. Tanya was poking through her pad thai and making faces at it.

"What this is? This looks like dirty spaghetti."

"It's Thai food. Don't think of it as spaghetti. Hey—what's the Russian word for 'spaghetti'?"

She looked at me as though I'd lost my mind for a moment before she barked out a laugh. "Is 'spaghetti' everywhere, Bella. Like Coca-Cola."

My phone rang before I could tell her that I wasn't much of a cola nut. I glanced at the area code, which pegged the caller as a Long Islander, but it wasn't either of Jake's numbers.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Miss Swan? It's Jim, the driver from the limo service? Yeah, I picked up your passenger, but he told me to just drive around instead of taking him home. I've been to Whitestone and back twice now, but I have another fare in midtown in about forty-five minutes, and I can't do this all night. He's not saying much, so I had to call. Where do you want him?"

I waved my hand around in the air to alert everyone at the table that the call was an important one. "Okay, let me give you an address. Tell him I'll be meeting him there." I rattled off the address of the place Alice found for us, thanked the driver, and ended the call. "We're on. Let's go."

The cab dumped us out onto Christopher Street, in front of what looked like a cross between a pet store and a dive bar. "Why's there a trumpet coming out of the cat's ass in the logo?" Emmett wondered, and I had no good answer to give him.

The Fat Cat, it turned out, was a sort of hipster playroom, packed with pool tables and ping pong tables, wood floors muzzy from spilled beer, and the soulful wail of a saxophone curling its way out of the speakers which hung from the ceiling.

"Hi-hi," Alice sang, springing up from a dingy orange loveseat in the corner and bounding her way over to me. "Isn't it perfect? Look—I even set up the Scrabble board, in case he wants to spell out words instead of saying them."

Emmett's eyes swept the room. "Sweet! Foosball. Come on, blondie. Let's grab a beer and boot that bad boy up," he whooped, latching on to Tanya's bicep and tugging her in the direction of the bar. He turned his head back to us and nodded to let us know that they'd be nearby if we needed them, but not so nearby that they'd make it obvious.

Edward lowered himself onto a winded old wingback, shaking hands with a seated Jasper on the way down. "Hey. What are you having?"

Jasper spun his beer bottle around to show Edward the PBR label, and Edward lifted his arm to flag down a passing waitress. "Two more of these, please, and whatever the ladies want."

We ranged ourselves around the low coffee table at the center of the well-worn seating group, and I tried not to think about how many dumpster dives it had taken to get this decor so carefully wrong.

"I knew he'd come. I knew it, "Alice beamed, her whole body quivering with hope and satisfaction. "I can't wait to get this over with. Are those two FBI or something?" She nodded in the direction of the foosball table, and I shook my head.

"The big guy's Emmett, my producer, and the stupid-beautiful woman is Tanya, Edward's producer."

She turned her eyes back to mine, a little crease in her brow. "He won't let you tape him, you know."

"No, they know it's not a story. They're good at setting things up, and we figured they might come in handy if we need to deal with relocating him at a moment's notice or calling the authorities on Castiglione. I'll bet Tanya knows six lines at Interpol off the top of her head."

"That's handy," she agreed, taking a delicate sip of her hard cider. A quartet shuffled onto the small stage at the side of the floor, and the mellow sound of Coltrane's "Naima" replaced the piped-in music. Skinny boys in skinny jeans and pork-pie hats milled around the place, nodding at each other and doing that weird lean-back laugh that seemed to be a kind of social ritual with this set. Tanya, a back-lit Jessica Rabbit, had already attracted the attention of a handful of hopefuls, who circled the foosball table and casually tried to get a read on what the deal was between her and Emmett.

I tapped my feet against the slightly sticky floor and kept my eyes on the door, not even trying to pretend that I could handle casual conversation. Fifteen minutes later, my diligence was rewarded by the sight of a stooped Felix standing uncertainly at the entrance, his eyes scanning the dim room with a look of trepidation and jet lag.

"Sssh. He's here," I announced, hoisting myself off the loveseat and slowly making my way across the space to meet him. I took cautious steps, waiting until he noticed me before making any obvious gesture in his direction, and even then it was only a sort of low wave of my hand at waist height.

I stopped several feet away from him. "I'm glad you came."

He looked down and snorted. "I didn't have a choice. The driver told me he was bringing me. He said if I wanted to go somewhere else, I was on my own after he dropped me off here."

"Look at me," I said, keeping my voice as soft as I could given the music playing in the background. "Look at me. I just want to help you. Sit down, have a beer, and tell me how I can help stop this."

He let me lead him back to our corner, but stopped short when he saw unfamiliar people sitting next to Edward.

"That's the friend I was telling you about," I rushed to explain before he could ask. "That's Alice, and the other guy is her boyfriend, Jasper. Of course you've already met Edward. I thought maybe something Alice saw in her dream would help, so I invited her along, but if you want I can tell them to go play some pool or something."

"You're not lying? She really dreamed about this?"

"Yeah. I know. She's a freak, but she's the nicest freak you'll ever meet. You can ask her yourself, and she'll tell you anything you want to know. She just wants to help, too. We all do." I took a chance and gently nudged him with my elbow. "Come on. Let me buy you a drink."

He perched on the edge of a chair in the seating group, clearly unwilling to commit his entire body to the thing. Edward offered him a politely casual "Hey", Jasper merely bent his head until his sharp chin touched his chest, and Alice smiled at him a little sadly. Not wanting to leave the circle and possibly cause him distress, I gestured to the waitress that we needed her, my quick and deliberate motion standing out like a sore thumb in the middle of all the hipster cool around me.

His order placed, we sat for a moment without speaking until Edward decided to get the ball rolling.

"You met Jake at M.I.T?"

Felix nodded. "We were housemates after I got shut out of Tang Hall in the grad program. There was a flyer in the union, and I called. We were in a lot of the same classes. He's a good guy." He looked down at his hands, which were twisted together in a knot on his lap. "He's not a big fan of yours, by the way."

"Don't sell it short. He hates my guts," Edward laughed. "The truth is I don't blame him. I'm just glad I got to her first. I'm a bit of a sneaky bastard that way."

The nervous man acknowledged the correction, and silence once again fell hard on our group. Alice, always uncomfortable when other people were ill at ease, was clearly gearing up to try another ice breaker, but I put my hand on her shoulder to stop her. I wanted to give him enough room to tell us whatever he wanted to say, and guiding him into a conversational pen wasn't going to serve any kind of purpose.

"So," he continued after what felt like an absolute eternity in hipster hell. "Tell me about your dream."

Alice carefully took him through whatever she'd seen. The dream had been a vivid one, grounding her firmly in her surroundings, and she tried to recall even the smallest detail for him in the hope that he'd recognize exactly where she was. When she reached the bit about the desk calendar, Felix's face paled.

"Stop," he whispered. "That's Dr. Lüder's station. I know that desk. Oh, God, I know where this is. I know what he's going to do."

"It's the cryogenics, isn't it?"

Instead of answering me, he folded himself in half and held his head between his hands. "I shouldn't know this. I don't know if he knows what I saw, but I think he suspects..."

"What? What did you see?" I reached out to him, either to comfort him or to encourage him to just spit it all out there; I wasn't sure which. "Nothing's too crazy for this conversation, Felix. Whatever you're thinking, whatever you suspect, just say it."

"Dr. Lüder is the head of the computer security team of the IT department. Ah, how can I explain this? See, every system in the collider works together, but they need to be protected separately, and since they're all run by computers, that means insulating the computer systems from one another and from the outside world. Dr. Lüder is in charge of making those systems both failsafe from the operation side and bulletproof from cyber attacks. There are so many redundant safety controls built into the systems that even if something fails, either another component will immediately assume control or the whole system will shut down."

"So Castiglione wants to sabotage the cryogenic systems somehow?"

Felix shook his head. "No. Well, yes, but that's only part of what I think he wants to do. Who he is—what matters most to him—is the control. He can't stand it when someone else has control of something he's working on. He has to know more than anyone else. It's partly about the challenge, and partly about being in charge."

Edward leaned forward and deposited his now-empty beer bottle onto the table. "Okay, control freak. Fine. But he can't really expect to be master and commander of every single aspect of a project like the collider, can he? I mean, that's ridiculous, not to mention impossible, right? Aro Castiglione, lord of the proton ring?"

Jasper chuckled at the lame joke. "Hey, I know I've got no skin in this game, but this guy sounds a lot like a CMFWIC. And if he's got the stripes, he's gonna be tough to stop."

"Chief Motherfucker Who's In Charge," Alice translated for me under her breath, apparently and disturbingly quite comfortable with mysterious Army slang.

"I don't think he expects to control it," Felix murmured. "I think he expects to destroy it so that nobody else can control it. Both the system, and the science." He took a long, long swig of beer. "One night, about two months ago, I was working late. Aro was long gone, but I wanted to brown-nose a little and so I went to drop off some thoughts about data analytics on his desk. The door was closed, but not locked, so I just slipped in there and dropped the folder on his desk. He has this notepad there, and he usually shreds everything, so it caught my attention that there was still writing on the pad. At first, it looked like a random series of codes. But numbers stick in my head, you know? It was stupid and nosy, but the next day, I plugged some of the numbers into a search to try and figure out what they were. I wanted to look good in case it came up sometime, like I had a jump on everyone else. The only thing the search turned up was that the numbers were parts of the powering interlock controllers."

"Pretend we have no idea what the hell those are, okay?" Edward smiled kindly, trying to encourage him to relax a little and let us in.

"Sorry. The powering interlock controllers basically make sure that all of the safety conditions are met before the magnets can get hot and the helium starts cooling them. It's the mothership of the whole operation from a computer standpoint. If something's not right, the powering interlock controllers shut everything down before any damage can be done."

My brow furrowed. "Why would he have those? He's strictly data. Is that what made you think something was maybe going on with him?"

"Well, yeah, but it's a lot of little things with that man. The things he says about how scientists aren't smart enough to appreciate the power of their own discoveries. About how people around him rise to the level of their own incompetence. About how nobody but him really understands or appreciates the bigger picture, and how it's dangerous to let these half-wits decide what to do with what the collider discovers. Things he's said about how foolish Lüder is for thinking that he can lock down the system, when it's obvious that someone with true intelligence and skill could work around any failsafe he creates. I'm around him more than anyone else, I guess. I see how underneath the front he shows everyone around there, when the truth is that he hates them and what they're trying to do. He's less guarded around me because in his mind, I barely exist. I just added it all up and it made me really, really nervous."

"Okay, so, wait. You think he's somehow going to try to reprogram these powering interlock controllers to fail and crash the whole operation?"

He shook his head again, confusing me further. "No. I think he's already done it. That's why he took the month of December as his vacation. He wanted to be far, far away from everything when it happened. Do you know what helium does? It displaces oxygen," he answered himself before we could give him a chance to see how little we know about the science. "Program the system to open the helium valves. That would render everyone in the place unconscious in a hurry. You feel like you're breathing air, but you're not, and the more you breathe, the more you suffocate. Once everyone in the tunnel who could override the controls has either passed out or died, the magnets would be free to super-heat and destroy the whole operation."

"Couldn't they stop that from the control room? It's in a whole other building, nowhere near the helium pipes."

Felix laughed, but there was no real humor behind the sound. "You don't get it, do you? Everyone believes the machines. As long as the machines tell them that everything's all right, there's no reason for them to double-check anything. When was the last time you added two numbers together with pencil and paper? You believe what the calculator on your phone tells you. Aro can make the machines tell the control room whatever he wants to tell them, and hide whatever he wants to hide."

"Well, Jesus," a shocked voice from behind us said, and we turned to see Jake standing there, his normally warm complexion almost completely drained of color. "It's true, then? This is really happening?" He moved to sit across from Felix. "Why didn't you tell me? You could have told me."

"Told you what? That I think one of the preeminent technical minds of a generation is a psychopath who's bent on destroying an enormous multinational scientific enterprise, even though I have no proof? Yeah, that doesn't make me sound too insane. You have no idea, Jacob. That man could ruin me. You sit there in your cushy job at Brookhaven, and you have no idea just how vicious things are in Geneva, how much pressure we're all under to make the billions of dollars invested in this project pay off for the rest of the world." He sounded so bitter, but it was obvious that he wasn't blaming Jake as much as he was being envious of him.

"If there's even a chance that this is real, we can't let it happen. The soft test of the collider is next week, right?"

Felix nodded. "The 19th. The date this girl saw on the calendar in her dream." He pointed at Alice, who'd curled herself into Jasper's side as though he could shield her from the reality of the nightmare coming true.

"All right," Jake nodded back. "Let's make a list of people. Our worst-case scenario is that they check it out and find nothing, and we look like morons. I lined up a job for you stateside, just in case. It's nothing spectacular, but it's good, and probably even better than what you've been doing over there, even if it's just in New York and not as flashy as working in Geneva."

I stood up then, and waved to Emmett and Tanya. "Mind if I introduce you to two more people? They're going to make the process of getting this dealt with a whole lot easier for all of us, I promise."

Although they were momentarily stunned by Emmett's size and Tanya's beauty, they got a grip pretty quickly and the eight of us spent the next several hours hammering out a plan of action. Beer bottles and glasses littered the table when we were done, and everyone was exhausted.

We dragged ourselves up the rickety club stairs and out onto the street, the mental strain manifesting itself in physical ways as we went. If our plan played out the way we hoped it would, Felix's relocation would be complete by the end of the weekend, and he wouldn't bear the stigma of having been the whistleblower. Nobody had any idea where Aro might have gone, so the task of rounding him up would have to be left to the authorities, and we were all more than happy to stay as far away as we could from him anyway.

After we'd said our goodnights and gone our separate ways, Edward and I took a cab back uptown to my apartment. I sagged against him, relieved that with Jake's help, I'd managed to generate enough trust from Felix to have him share his fears and shed some light on who and what we were looking for.

We were tired, but I couldn't help thinking about how so often people were frightened of the wrong things. Big crowds and huge wars required so much cooperation and agreement, and you could see them coming from miles away. What was truly terrifying was the absolute tyranny of the individual who operated in silence, and in secret, and what was silent and secret and unshared could not be known until it was too late to stop, or change, or reverse.

One was the scariest number. The death row sniper. The lone gunman in Chicago. The suicidal Chechan separatist. Aro was the same, only different: his methods were so clean. No bullets or bombs. Nobody aiming anything at anyone else. Just a few well-placed key strokes from a man who knew what he was doing.

Of all the things we reported on every day, there was never an opportunity to stop it before it happened. None of it was knowable with enough advance warning to change a single thing. And here, for once, and almost purely by freak coincidence, we had that chance.

# # #

A/N - Hi there. I'm inexcusable.

Thanks as always to littlesecret and ciaobella for reading this before you do. And thanks to you, forever, for reading and recommending and reviewing. It's a pleasure and an honor to write for you.

I should mention here that since this story takes place in the winter of 2009, I'm referring to the original "guilty" verdict in the Amanda Knox case, and not the recent decision upon appeal.

We have one more chapter of this story to go ( I swear that one will be up in about a month!), and then I'm going to finally throw myself into the effort of writing the novel I originally showed up here to practice for. The working title of the novel is "The Event Warden", and I can tell you that if you like what you've seen here, you'll probably really enjoy that as well, because I'll be on my very best writing behavior there. I'll be updating people on the progress I make with the thing both on my FF profile and on my blog, the link for which can be found on my profile page here at FF. If you'd care to know what's going on, putting me on Author Alert would be a good thing.


	25. Punch the Clock

# # #

Punch the Clock

At three a.m. on Monday morning, Felix placed a call to the director of the ALICE program in Geneva. I sat next to him on the couch in my living room while he did so. For whatever reason, he seemed to feel most comfortable with me, and I held his shaking hand as he waited to be connected to his cappo di tutti cappi.

"He doesn't even know who I am," Felix whispered during the pause. "We've never spoken."

"It's okay. You're covered, remember? We've got you covered. Let's just get this done. He can't touch you." I gave his hand a small squeeze and watched the dead-of-night shadows play across his nervous features. While I understood his unease, I couldn't imagine that anyone in charge of a project that was so visible and important would be willing to gamble on the chance of disaster.

The hand I held stiffened and gripped me tighter, and I knew that the director's secretary had switched the call over to her boss.

"Allo," a deep voice growled into the receiver, audible even from a distance of two feet.

Felix's voice was as shaky as the rest of him, but we'd prepared a script of sorts for him to read and he did his best to stick to it. Maybe it helped; after the first few words of greeting and questions, the voice on the other end of the receiver was dead silent while the man next to me spoke, so it was clear that Felix had the director's attention.

At the end of his schpiel Felix paused, clearly uncertain what to make of the complete silence in his ear. A small and painfully awkward silence followed, and then I heard an absolute torrent of garbled French spilling out of the handset.

" Mais ce n'est pas— Je comprends, mais— M'sieur, si vous me permettrait—" the man next to me spluttered, trying desperately to get a word in edgewise and growing ever more agitated in the attempt. I couldn't make out much of what the other man was saying, but it was pretty easy to guess that he was berating Felix and demanding some sort of proof for the suspicions he'd raised. Felix continued to offer disjointed attempts to clarify and assure, but he was getting nowhere.

I tugged his hand to distract him. "What's going on?"

He shook his head, defeat and abject horror camping out in his eyes. I had myself a quick little think, and saw no other options.

"Ask him for the chance to return and explain it all to him in person. Assure absolute discretion, and offer to tender your immediate resignation if what you have to say doesn't merit investigation." I tugged his hand again, this time far more firmly. "Do it. Talk over him. Do it."

Felix swallowed, but nodded and did as I asked, his voice rising both in volume and pitch until it was clear he'd finally managed to overpower the invective on the other end. Terse back and forth followed, ending with an abrupt 'click' and a dial tone. The director, it seemed, was done with the whole discussion.

Neither one of us said anything for a moment, and then I chucked him on the arm and tried to lighten the mood a bit. "So, he's clearly not one of those 'fun at parties' French guys."

"I can't do this. I can't."

My teeth ground against each other as I struggled to cultivate a little patience with the man. "You have no choice. Or, well, you have a choice, but only if you want to gamble with the lives of your colleagues and the future of the program. You're going back. You don't have to stay, but you have to go back and tell them what you know. You have to make them listen to you."

He doubled over and cradled his forehead in the palm of his hand, rocking back and forth like a child trying to comfort itself upon waking from a nightmare.

"Come on, Felix. I know it's not pleasant, but they can't do anything to you. I swear it. You tell them what you know, and then you can walk out of there and never look back. They'd never risk the scandal of saying anything about this. Anyone can see that you're sincere by just looking at your face, for crying out loud."

Felix tilted his face so that his eyes found mine. "Go with me. Please."

"What? Why? I'm not a scientist. I'm not even a hacker. I'd be useless."

"Not to me. Not to me, you wouldn't be." That murmur. It made me wonder whether anyone had ever stood up for this man in his entire life. Where would I have been if I hadn't had parents who supported me through school? If I hadn't had mentors like Andrew? If I hadn't had bosses like Peter, or coworkers like the guys, or friends like Alice, or happiness like Edward? I'd been born with courage, but that courage had also been fed and watered and cultivated by the people who surrounded me, who constantly challenged me to be the best version of myself.

I had no idea how I was going to make this work; taking a holiday weekend vacation was one thing, but abandoning the desk without a network-sanctioned reason was quite another. Peter was going to be pissed. The network was going to be really, really pissed. I absolutely couldn't leave, and I absolutely was going to leave.

"I'll go," I told him, and saw relief chase the anguish from his face while I elbowed the sane and sensible part of myself out of the picture.

"Seriously?"

"Sure. Why not? Should be fun." Without turning my head, I knew Edward had been lurking in the doorway the whole time to give Felix the illusion of privacy, and the amused snort that greeted my words was layered with about fifty different meanings.

"Crazy looks good on you, sweetheart. Now we really match." He strolled into the room, his bare feet slapping softly against the polished floors, and perched himself next to me on the rolled arm of the couch.

"Are you okay with this?"

"No. I hate it." A wry grin twisted his lips before they met the hairline at my forehead. "Doesn't mean I don't want you to do it, though. I don't, but I do, and you should go before I give in to the urge to chain you to the coffee table."

"But the show—and the network. God, Edward."

His warm hand found my shoulder, and he gave me a little squeeze. "We bring it to Peter. I'm pretty sure I can handle the show by myself for a night or two if it means saving the lives of innocent geeks." That wry grin shifted into something infinitely more mischievous as he spread his arms in ironic supplication. "Hey, how much trouble can I get into behind a desk?"

"I don't even want to think about it. Let's see what Peter says."

The two of us were lying in wait in front of Peter's office by the time he arrived that morning. He eyed us both with bleary but mounting suspicion, and we herded him into his office and closed the door.

"What? Oh, Jesus, what now. Come on, let a man have a second cup of coffee before you start tearing his world apart. And a muffin. I have a feeling I'm going to need a muffin for this."

He buzzed Heidi and barked his order at her, adding extra cups of coffee for each of us without even asking whether we needed them. Turning his attention away from his phone, he folded his hands on the desk in front of him. "Tell me I don't have to buzz her back and ask her to hunt down some nitroglycerin pills. Or some cyanide. Or anesthesia."

I took a deep breath. "I need to leave town for a day, maybe two."

Peter's eyes shifted between Edward and myself. "Is this a joke? You're here to ask me about your vacation? Just send a memo next time instead of scaring me to death."

"Yeah, see, the thing is, though, that I need to leave today."

He was still for a moment, his brow furrowed with concern. "Are you okay? Is this a family emergency?"

"No! Oh, no, they're all fine. I'm fine."

"Oh, well, that's good—"

"People could still die, though," Edward offered, interrupting Peter's short-lived relief. "Lots of people. Also, there might be a pretty big international scandal involved."

Our boss lifted a finger to silence Edward. "This is the part where we wait for the coffee, I think. Don't say another word."

Edward whistled while we stared at each other without saying anything for a full three minutes before Heidi tapped on the door and entered with a tray of coffee cups and pastries. Peter grasped his cup with the fervor of a man who'd spied an oasis in the driest desert, taking three huge pulls before setting down the cup and indicating that I should continue my explanation.

I laid the entire story out from start to finish, Edward helpfully supplying context and color commentary on what we were up against. Peter nodded, his face serious and his attention focused, and I thought again about the fact that I was insanely lucky to be working for someone who cared enough about me not to dismiss me out of hand even when I brought the craziest possible tale to the table.

When I was done, he tilted his head to one side and finished his coffee with a thoughtful expression before he spoke. "No chance of going on the record for this?"

"Absolutely none. I promised. Peter, please. This can't be about the news. It's about saving those lives and making sure the project isn't compromised. I don't know much about what they're doing over there, but I do know that embarrassing CERN isn't going to serve anyone's best interests."

"Hmmm." His fingers flexed on the surface of his desk while I waited for the verdict. Finally, he leaned over to punch the intercom on his phone once more. "Heidi? I need you to book a flight for this evening. Bella will give you the details in a minute." His left eyebrow lifted as he regarded me with a faint smile. "Make sure she uses her own credit card for this, too." He removed his finger from the intercom and rose to stand behind his desk. "For the record, this is horrible timing, but also for the record, anything important usually happens at the worst possible time. I'll figure things out here, but I need you to promise that you're not going to endanger yourself in any way. Offer this guy moral support or whatever, but keep your distance and run like hell at the first sign of trouble. This isn't your fight, and what you don't know about this stuff could hurt everyone there, including yourself. _Keep your distance_. The only reason I'm willing to let you go is because this Aro character isn't anywhere near the place."

"Thank you," Edward chuckled. "You know, that sounds far less condescending and controlling coming from you than it would from me. Could you add something about how you want her to take a few Marines along for the ride as bodyguards? Like, people who won't listen to her when she tries to shake them loose?"

Peter wagged his head in Edward's direction. "What the hell am I supposed to do with him while you're gone? I guess Richard'll have to pinch-hit for you."

"Ugh, no thanks. I'll fly solo."

"You'll sit next to Richard and stop whining about it, is what you'll do. The show's built for two. It's either Richard or Lauren."

"Why not Emmett? He knows the drill, and I actually _like_ him, which I definitely can't say about Richard. Or Lauren."

"We'll discuss this later," Peter stated, his tone leaving no further room for argument. "Bella, you can catch the redeye after tonight's show. I want you back here in time for Wednesday's show, no matter what. Clear?"

"But that gives me no more than twenty-four hours to figure this out!" I still had no idea what we were looking for, and based on what Felix had told me, he didn't, either.

"Well then, I guess you'd better sleep on the flight over. You're going to need the rest."

Peter dismissed us, and I left his office to give an expectant Heidi the details on the flight arrangements for myself and Felix before Edward and I headed down to our own office.

The sudden prospect of leaving the office for two days, when combined with the reason for that departure, made me beyond frantic. I sliced through the every task in front of me like a buzzsaw, rushing home during my non-existent lunch hour to throw some random clothes in a bag with my passport. Felix had run up to his parents' house in Fairfield, but was due back at the studio with the town car by the time the show was finished, and we'd leave straight from the sign-off to take the same flight Edward and I had taken on our first trip over to Geneva.

And through it all, Edward kept his cool. For my sake, he refrained from telling me how little he wanted me to go over there without him. For my sake, he kept his mouth shut and didn't offer me any advice unless I asked for it first. For my sake, he showed me nothing but absolute confidence in my ability to handle the situation, do the job, and come home. Whatever I'd given him during his trip to Grozny, he gave me back in spades. It wasn't until the show had wrapped and I stood there with my bag in my hand, ready to walk down to the waiting car with Felix in it, that he let me see how difficult the whole thing was for him. I wanted to promise him that I'd be back, that I wasn't Oleg and that this wasn't the same thing at all, but if we were going to make this relationship work, he needed to trust me the way I trusted him.

"Listen to me," he said, his voice tense as he pulled me into a hug too firm for real comfort. "It might interest you to know that it costs $30,475 to have a private jet on standby to fly from JFK to Geneva at a moment's notice, not including airport fees and taxes, or tips for the cabin crew and a pilot who was part of the space program. Ask me how I know this." His arms tightened even further, and I felt his hands grip my jacket where it lay across my back before they came to rest on either side of my neck so that we were face to face. "Be brilliant, figure this out, and get back here. Definitely don't fall in love with any of those science guys. If you need me, call. Everything else can go right to hell, because you're the only thing that matters to me, you understand?"

"I'm a thing?" I teased him, because getting anything serious past the lump in my throat was impossible.

"You're my thing. You're my favorite thing. Now go ahead—scram." After one more squeeze and a kiss that left me legitimately breathless, his arms dropped to his sides and he stepped away from me. I felt something weighing against my hair, and turned my head to see he'd draped some fabric around me. When I yanked it away from my shoulders and saw that it was his lucky shirt, my heart absolutely doubled in size to accommodate the love I had for the man.

"Call it a loan," he grinned, though his eyes were serious and slightly wild with anxiety. "You'd better not need it, though." Then he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his suit pants and winked before turning to walk down the hall, clearly unwilling to watch me leave. "See you around, Mary," was his parting shot.

The trip was uneventful, although I realized that first class would always sort of be second-class without Edward across the partition from me. Unable to sleep, Felix fidgeted in the seat next to mine, dropping cutlery, switching his reading light on and off, and flicking aimlessly through the available television and movie offerings. I tried really hard not to be annoyed, and possibly succeeded as far as he could tell. Instead, I used the time to think about what we could do once we were cheek to jowl with whatever blinds Aro had built to conceal his actions. I didn't hold out much hope that we'd be able to either find what he'd done or figure out how to stop it, short of pulling the plug on the whole computer system and depriving it of a power source.

The net result of all that thinking was the depressing realization that the chances of us beating Aro in a programming contest were virtually nil. We'd be wasting our time in the attempt, and would just have to figure out another way.

I was no closer to a plan by the time we'd landed, the light drizzle and gloomy chill that greeted us doing nothing to brighten my outlook or fuel my non-existent optimism. I sent Edward a brief text to let him know we'd arrived, fighting the urge to call and possibly wake him up just so he could tell me again that I was more than capable of figuring this whole thing out.

Thirty seconds later, he texted back: _**Hurry up. What's taking you so long?**_, and that made the dreary flight and my overwhelming task momentarily vanish with a laugh.

We shuffled our way through the airport and found a taxi to take us straight to CERN. The institute's campus was practically deserted, with only a few early-bird employees making their ways toward their stations. Felix led the way through the security process, and in fairly short order we were standing before his boss.

Based on the phone conversation he'd had with Felix, I'd assumed that the man was French, but he was actually and fairly obviously German. His Teutonic beak and ice-blue eyes were all as sharp as knives, and he fired questions at both of us in clipped English as though he were shooting arrows from a bow. At turns skeptical and then concerned, to his credit, he heard us out while we put forth our suspicions. In the end, we managed to somehow convince him that neither one of us was out to ruin or embarrass the program, and that all we wished to do was to discover whether Castiglione had a different and far more sinister agenda.

"Very well," he relented. "You may examine the programming elements for the cryogenic system on the following conditions—I insist upon your absolute discretion, and you will each sign a confidentiality agreement to this effect. You will not discuss this matter with anyone else on the team. You will confine yourselves to the cubicle in the stack room for the duration of your examination, and should anyone ask you what you are doing there, you will only tell them that I have sent you there to review and inspect a protocol for me in advance of the soft test this Saturday. If you find any irregularities, you will bring the evidence straight to me, and to me alone. Do I make myself clear?"

We both nodded at him like children before a strict school teacher, and he asked his assistant to make sure that the cubicle he'd indicated was free for our use and to prepare agreements for us to sign. With that, we were effectively dismissed to the Siberia of the stack room, and the director went back to his directing.

I couldn't help but recall the tour I'd been on with Aro when we entered the stack room, and remembered with a shiver his comment about geography no longer being destiny when it came to relationships between men and women. If we were right about his plans, then geography was also no longer destiny when it came to committing what amounted to an act of scientific terrorism.

We dropped our things on the floor near the cubicle; Felix scratched the back of his neck, clearly unsure about where we should begin.

Sighing, I took advantage of a nearby office chair and kicked off my shoes. "Okay, so how do we access the cryogenic system from here? Any thoughts? I have no idea about computer forensics, but let's just start at the beginning and see if we can find anything that looks unusual."

For the next six hours, we combed through every inch of the command prompts for the cryogenic control program. It was mind-numbing work, and not at all unlike sifting through a mountain of rice kernels in the hope of finding one that was slightly misshapen. While we worked, Felix attempted to explain in hushed tones what was likely to happen if the cooling mechanism was disrupted. The enormous superconducting magnets that comprised the collider would enter a state called "magnetic quench", and in addition to releasing deadly amounts of helium into the tunnels, the disruption and subsequent overheating of the magnets would effectively destroy the functionality of the collider far into the future.

"It's a brilliant plan, actually," he mumbled, and the grudging respect in his voice would have shocked me if I had been dealing with anyone other than a scientist. "If you want to kill a collider, this is definitely the neatest way to do it."

"I'm glad you're enjoying the artistry," I snapped at him, and then immediately felt guilty about doing so because none of this was his fault. "Ugh, I'm sorry. I'm just really frustrated, and the jet lag isn't helping." I stood up and stretched my aching limbs, listening to the sound of the vertebrae in my back as they groaned from the effort of having held the same position for so long. Force of habit made me check the watch on my wrist, and I noticed that I hadn't even adjusted it to local time when we landed.

As my other hand moved to correct the oversight, every muscle in my body froze, and sudden, blinding realization coursed its way through me like a flash fire.

"Stop," I whispered. Felix, who was still typing away on his keyboard, looked up at the sound. "Stop."

"What? Are you okay? You look...strange."

So many things were suddenly flying around in my brain that it took me a moment or two to remember how to speak.

_The date on the desk calendar. The date in Alice's dream. The date._

_The computer lies to us. It tells us everything fine when it's not._

_It's eleven o'clock in New York, but it's four o'clock in Geneva._

_Edward wishing he could turn back time the day after the tornado._

_We can lie to the computer. The computer lies to us, but we can lie to it, too. _

"Oh my _god_." I was almost angry with myself, because the solution was so ridiculously simple that I should have seen it the moment we realized what Aro might be up to.

"What is it? What?" Felix's voice filtered back into my consciousness; he sounded more than a little freaked out, and I could only imagine what the expression on my face must have looked like to him. I probably resembled someone in the middle of a petit mal seizure. I sat back down again and scooted my chair so that it was right up against his.

"Tell me something. Are the pipes full of helium right now?"

He shook his head. "No, they probably won't start cooling the tunnel until Thursday, or maybe even Friday. No sense in wasting all of that energy if the magnets aren't active. Why?"

My right hand gripped his arm so hard that he actually winced. "Let's tell the computer it's Saturday. Let's just change the clock on the computer, and see what happens."

His eyes widened as he absorbed what I was saying. "That's just—holy cow."

"Right? Because if the computer thinks it's Saturday, then whatever Aro planned for the system should happen. And if it happens when there's no helium in the pipes, then nobody gets hurt and the collider is safe. All we have to do is lie to the computer and make it believe that it's Saturday."

I whipped my head around to see who was with us in the stack room, but it was totally empty. "When does this place close? Is the director still here? We should go back up and talk to him."

We weren't even pretending to be cool as we raced back to the director's office. His assistant took one look at us and got up to knock urgently on his closed door. She waited until we heard a muffled "Entrez" from the other side, and then twisted the doorknob to let us in.

Convincing him to let us rig the clock was, in the end, not the huge trial I feared it might be. For all his lack of warmth, the director was a clever man, and altering something so simple for the purposes of testing a theory was clearly a low-risk venture. This place was all about theories, after all. I was also pretty certain that we'd only get one shot at proving ourselves, and I prayed that the bullet in our gun was the right one. It seemed almost too simple, but maybe Aro's enormous ego made it likely he'd never stop to consider something as trivial as the clock on a computer.

The director himself agreed to go down into the tunnel to monitor what, if anything, happened when we rigged the computer clock. I couldn't tell whether he was rooting for us to succeed or fail, but it didn't really matter. I only cared that he was letting us try. Now that Felix had some direction and the hope of vindicating himself in the eyes of his boss, he seemed to latch onto that and let it invigorate him. We determined that the most likely window of activity would be within a half-hour of the start of the soft test, which meant that we'd set the clock to 9:30 a.m. on the nineteenth and just see what happened.

While the director made his way below with a walkie-talkie, we stationed ourselves in the cryogenic computer control center. The room was nondescript enough, and the setup was surprisingly uncomplicated. A simple computer terminal managed the entire thing, and while there were a series of blue-capped glass cylinders that fed a network of pipes which gradually increased in size, the control unit wouldn't have looked out of place in your average research carrel at a public library.

"Is this thing even running the latest operating software?"

Felix shook his head. "Around here, what the equipment looks like isn't the important thing. Watch this."

He tapped the space bar on the keyboard in front of the ancient monitor, and the screen burst into vibrant action, every subsequent keystroke he made almost instantly shifting what I saw on the screen.

"Whoa, that's a pretty speedy processor, whatever it is."

He zipped us into the computer settings, and before I could blink, we were looking at the date and time functions on the user panel. I rubbed my thumb against the "talk" button of the handheld radio, then pressed down.

"Yes?"

"We're changing the time now. Please stand by."

Several clicks later, it was suddenly the morning of the nineteenth as far as the computer knew.

"Cross your fingers," I commanded the man next to me, because god knew everything on my body was crossed. I'd even contemplated braiding my hair.

The minutes ticked by, and we watched the CGI second hand crawl around the face of the CGI clock.

The director's irritated voice crackled over the radio. "Have you changed the time yet? The system is perfectly intact down here. Precisely how long do you anticipate keeping me in this tunnel?"

I answered in the affirmative, and begged for his patience as politely and confidently as I could. In reality, I was shivering from nerves and the fear that we'd gotten it all wrong.

"Think, dammit," I urged both Felix and myself. "Is there a better time for him to strike than at the beginning of the test? Is there a time during the day that means more to him than—"

And then for the second time that day, I froze and burned in the same moment, because of _course_ he wouldn't have made it that simple. Aro had only mentioned the importance of a clock to me once, and that was on the first occasion I ever spoke with him. It would absolutely be in keeping with his demented need for precision to do the same thing in this case.

"Felix, we need to reset the clock again." I smiled then, and could barely keep the giddy excitement from swallowing the words. From the moment the thought occurred to me, my instinct had turned over like the perfectly-tuned ignition of a combustion engine. "Check the USNO Master Clock website. Reset the computer clock to reflect whatever time it would be here when that clock reads 10:15 a.m. on the nineteenth."

"But that would be...five hours into the soft test."

"Do it. Trust me."

He looked at me as though I were insane, but did as I asked, and I held my breath as the computer reset to the new time.

Nothing happened for a full minute, and then the walkie-talkie next to me crackled back to life and vindicated every ounce of faith I'd ever had in my ability to get to the truth of things.

"Du Hurensohn! The valves are open. Engage the failsafe and terminate the trial immediately. Immediately."

"Gotcha," I whispered to Aro wherever he was, and punched a flabbergasted Felix on his arm to celebrate the victory. "Hah!"

"Ow."

Stifling the urge to call him a sissy and seriously wishing I had any one of my guys here instead of him, I radioed the director back and asked him to join us in the control room.

Despite the fact that it was so late in the day, it took surprisingly little time to notify the authorities that Castiglione was suspected of sabotage, although it took the better part of the night trapped in a room with those authorities to explain the whole thing and make a coherent case for them. By breakfast the next morning, we got word that Interpol had taken him into custody as he sat drinking a cappuccino on the terrace of his villa in the scenic Tuscan town of Volterra. He declaimed in the most profane manner possible, but they took him in all the same, and by the time I'd made it to the airport for the flight home plans were already in the works to extradite him back to Geneva to stand trial. Felix stayed behind at the request of the director, who wanted to debrief him with the computer forensics team they'd have to bring on to try to unearth the trail Aro had left behind.

_**Got him. On my way home**__,_ I texted Edward, and again received an almost immediate response even though it was still the middle of the night in New York.

_**About time, slowpoke. Stop goofing around and get back here. Bring cheese. And meatballs**__._

I was simultaneously as exhausted and as happy as I could ever remember being. _**No. Also, I might have lost your shirt**__._

_**I might overlook that if you show up here without any of yours, too**__._

_**Go back to sleep and keep dreaming. I'll see you tonight**__._

_**Thank god. So tired of fondling Emmett.**_

I put the phone on airplane mode and zoned out while the flight attendant went through the monotony of pre-takeoff floatation device instructions, barely making it to cruising altitude before reclining the seat and surrendering to the most delicious oblivion I'd ever experienced.

Sneaking up on Edward Cullen was no mean feat, but I was drunk on the victory of singlehandedly averting a major disaster for the world's most important scientific research facility, and I could hardly be blamed for pushing my luck a little as a result. Despite the fact that camping out in the computer stack room at CERN certainly hadn't resulted in the same body odor crisis that spending the better part of the week hiding among the poor in the ghettos of Grozny had, I still detoured to the shower in the employee's gym before heading over to the studio. Traffic from JFK had been horrific, but I had ten minutes to spare before we went to air.

Rose saw me first as I entered the room, and I held my forefinger against my lips to let her know I didn't want to draw attention to myself. She rolled her eyes at me, but somehow managed to communicate the information to the rest of the floor staff. And so it was that I managed to creep up behind my co-anchor, whose attention was distracted by Steve, busily hiding the coil of Edward's earpiece under the back collar of his suit jacket.

I slid undetected into my chair to his right and cocked my head to the side, waiting for him to notice me. I probably should have known better; the previous twenty-four hours had made me unrealistically optimistic.

Edward kept his back turned to me when Steve had finished with his mic. "Sweetheart, I'm pretty sure we've been through this already. If you want to sneak around, it helps to wear really quiet shoes." He heaved a dramatic sigh, but when he finally turned to look at me, everything in his eyes said love, and happiness, and relief, and home. "Hi there."

"Hi, yourself," I smiled back at him. "Kiss me before Charlotte does her thing with my face."

His hands came up to cup my cheeks. "She can do whatever she likes to it, but it'll always be my very favorite face." And the brief touch of his lips against mine was nowhere near enough for me, but the clock was ticking and Charlotte and Steve swarmed me like the most eager drones in the hive.

"Welcome back from wherever you wandered off to, Bella," Ben's voice grumbled in my ear. "Someone hand her the show run and get a level on her audio. Edward, you take the lead and give her time to catch up. We're on in two, people."

"Come on," Edward murmured, nudging his elbow against mine. "Let's make some news."

# # #

A/N - I'll just paraphrase Ben Franklin here, and say that she who is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. This is the final full chapter of "Breaking News"; an epilogue should post before New Year. Can you trust me? God, I hope so.

"Magnetic quench" actually occurred at CERN in 2008; it was an accident, which resulted in the release of six tons of helium and forced the institute to shut down the collider for months while they made the necessary repairs. To the best of my knowledge neither Italian megalomaniacs nor travelers from an apocalyptic future were involved in that event. I'm pretty sure the aliens were laughing their multiple heads off, though.

My deepest love and most sincere appreciation to Dina (denverpopcorn) for pre-reading much of this chapter to let me know if everything added up, and to Ser and Tracy for existing in the first place. And always, always to you people out there who read this and review it and tell other people about it. You're six hundred million proton collisions of beautiful. Have the most spectacular holiday ever.


	26. En Memoriam

# # #

En Memoriam

"What the hell _is_ this place? Can't anyone in this group find somewhere normal to hang out?"

Emmett's reaction wasn't all that shocking, given that we were huddled under a gaudy gold marquee on the ass-end of Brighton Beach Avenue in Brooklyn. Two enormous black wrought-iron lampposts flanked the front door, looking as out of place where they stood as the lamppost in Narnia must have. The late March winds kicked up off of Jamaica Bay, chilling us to the bone and making me really sorry I'd listened to Tanya and worn a skirt.

"Well, I'm freezing my non-existent knockers off," Alice announced to all and sundry. "Let's just go in. It'll be good. I know it'll be good."

With that, our party filtered through the revolving door and into the catering hall.

There were twenty-four of us in all, and I knew that Tanya was very touched that all the boys in the bullpen and so much of the staff had braved the Q train to the outer boroughs. Most of them even attempted to dress for the occasion, although this was probably half out of respect for her, and half in the hope that they'd meet some slightly drunk and willing women.

The National was perhaps the most venerated of all the Russian catering halls in Little Odessa. Within its gaudy red walls, punks from Wall Street rubbed shoulders with ageing gangsters from the old country as everyone ate the heaviest food on the planet and danced to everything from folk songs to Luther Vandross covers, courtesy of a house band straight out of "The Wedding Singer". For the purposes of the meal here, chicken fat was available as a condiment on every table, and anything you ordered was merely to line your stomach to receive the obscene amount of vodka you'd throw into it once the meal was over.

The hostess sat us together at a long banquet table near the dance floor, and Alice immediately went completely berserk. "It's ABBA! Listen —Waterloo!" Sure enough, the girl in the silver sequined top at the mic was treating the room to a truly hideous rendition of the song.

Alice bounced right out of her chair and tugged violently on Jasper's reluctant arm. "Come on, let's have a quick dance. It's a perfect way to start the night." He shot her a confused look, and she patiently explained that Waterloo was where the Russians defeated Napoleon. Jasper bit his lip, but couldn't refuse her anything, and so let himself be led out onto the already crowded dance floor.

Edward leaned over to whisper in my ear. "Is it worth telling her that it was the Prussians and not the Russians in that particular fight, or should we just let her have her fun?"

"Let it go. It's Jasper's problem now."

He was making a valiant effort to appear relaxed and casual, but I could feel the tension in his every move, in the way he twitched his arm as it rested on the table next to mine, in the way he stiffened when Tyler slapped his back in too-hearty greeting. Nobody knew how to do this, but everyone was determined to do it all the same.

The first four bottles of vodka hit the table with the appetizers. Wordlessly, Edward grabbed one of the bottles and started loading up the shot glasses, while Peter, who flanked Tanya on her other side, grabbed another and armed the rest of the table.

Some silent conversation passed between Edward and Tanya while the glasses made the rounds, and soon we each had a shot in our hands. Tanya stood to face us; when she finally spoke, her voice was low, but steady, and Edward reached over to hold my hand.

"Za zdorovje! To your health, my friends." She gestured briefly with her glass before draining it in one go, and the rest of us quickly followed suit. The glasses were barely emptied before they were filled once more and she continued.

"My Oleg, he was happy man, you know? He was strong, and brave, and so, so crazy. He drink too much, and he laugh too loud, and people love him because what else do you do with someone so full of life? And he was so full of life. Full of life, and full of bullshit, and full of love for this job he did and for me and for his friends. For strangers. For people who could not speak. He want to speak for them, to show the world how they suffer.

"And so he try to do that. And he believe that if he can show trust, people will trust him, too. I am happy he showed trust. Today, I say goodbye to the hope that this trust save him. I kiss his memory and use my trust to believe he is with God. He would have loved you all. I am sorry you do not have chance to know him.

"He would not want me to be sad. And so for him, I won't be sad. For him, I will smile twice as much, and be twice as happy. Goodbye, my darling. Go and tell your jokes in heaven. To my Oleg!"

"To Oleg," we echoed, and downed our second shots, the alcohol burning its way through the tears in my throat. When the glasses hit the table once more, nobody was quite sure what to do, or where to look, or what to say. Edward's hand never left mine, and I squeezed his to let him know that I was there for him however he needed me to be.

The demented disco party raged on around us for a moment, this time in the form of the bizarre music videos played during the wedding band's break from the stage, while we all sat quietly and waited to see what Tanya might want to do next. She glanced around the table at all of us, and then smiled the biggest, most beautiful smile.

"Enough toasting for now. Later, when I'm drunk, I will tell you funny stories about my Oleg. But now, is a party, just like he wanted. Please—eat, and drink, and dance, and laugh." She tilted her head down and offered a special smile to Peter, who looked up at her with gentle eyes full of understanding and poorly concealed adoration. "Petya, dance with me, pajalusta."

Peter pushed his chair back and rose to stand next to her, and the confident power-player of the news world was nowhere to be found in that moment. Instead, he ducked his chin and handed her his vulnerability, as though it were a cloak she could use to cover her own naked helplessness. "I'm warning you right now. I'm not really much of a dancer. I'll do my best not to cause a pile-up out there."

She hugged him then, and let her hands run up and down his back. "Doesn't matter. We go slow. Slow is nice."

"Yeah. Slow's fine with me. Safer, too." He slipped an arm around her waist in a move that was as much about comfort as it was about possibilities.

Edward and I watched as she led him onto the crowded dance floor, where they were quickly engulfed by an enthusiastic crowd bopping around to some mash-up of a Russian military choir and a punk-rock quartet performing "Happy Together". Most of the guys quickly abandoned the table to stake out likely female victims in the glittery crowd; Newton displayed unimpeachable manners by insisting a reticent Kathy earn some bruises with him, but she had the tremendous good sense to kick her shoes off before following him out into the fray. It clearly wasn't her first time at a free-for-all outer-borough throwdown.

"Want to sit this one out?" I asked him, and he nodded, reaching over to push a plate of herring in my direction. "Eeew. I'll stick with those potato things, thanks."

He shrugged and placed a piece of the creamy fish on his plate, although he made no move to eat it. We were essentially alone in this busy room for a moment, there by ourselves in a little bubble, and I couldn't draw a true bead on his mood. Not knowing what else to do, I just gave him my company until he decided he needed something else or something more from me.

"She filed the paperwork with the Russian embassy this week," he finally offered. "It should go pretty quickly now, since it's clear his body will never be recovered."

"I can't imagine how difficult it was for her to reach that decision." My heart broke all over again for her, and for the man I loved, and I wished beyond anything that I had the power to at least give them the comfort of some closure, even if that closure meant a proper funeral with a body to cry over.

"No, it's good. It's time. He's not coming back, because nothing on this planet would have kept him away from her for so long, and we both know it. I'm happy for her. He wouldn't have wanted her to live this half-life." He exhaled and picked his head up to look around the room. Even though it was fairly early in the evening, the place was already packed with groups of people celebrating weddings, and promotions, and reunions, and birthdays. Old and young, people filled the space with laughter and whoops of joy and loud, loud conversation.

Edward tapped the table, then grabbed a bottle of vodka and two shot glasses. "Let's get drunk, okay? Let's just get a little drunk, and do completely inappropriate things to each other in public." He poured out shots for us, and we clinked our glasses and downed them. After wiping his lips with the back of his hand, he squinted at me. "You know, we met at a memorial service."

"That we did," I agreed. "I like this one better, though."

His eyebrows lifted, and a sarcastic little grunt left his mouth. "Oh yeah? Why's that?"

I fitted myself as closely to his side as I could, and reached up to whisper in his ear. "Because this one's about life. And because at this one, I know you, and I love you, and we share closets and bathrooms and beds and desks now. And because you don't really call me 'Mary' all that much anymore." I kissed his neck and felt him lean into me a little. "Would Oleg have liked me, do you think?"

"Oh, sweetheart." That finally made him smile . "He would have been so completely crazy about you. You have no idea." We polished off another shot, and then he dragged me out onto the dance floor. A trio of huge drag queens wearing white vinyl go-go boots had taken the stage, and they were belting out "I Will Survive" as they hauled giggling elderly women up from the crowd to dance with them.

The hours passed, and we drank and laughed and ate and danced, at first to please Tanya, and then because it's what we all really wanted to do. Everywhere I looked, something completely insane was happening. Predictably, Tyler and Seth had their ties around their foreheads, and they were trying to clear a space on the floor so that they could Gator properly. Rose and Alice had apparently formed some kind of fast friendship out there, and they were screaming song lyrics at each other while Emmett and Jasper made vain attempts to calm them down and redirect the attention toward themselves. Paul had scored a dance with an absolute Amazon, and it was kind of tough to tell which one of them was leading from my vantage point, but he seemed pretty happy all the same. Peter hadn't left Tanya's side the whole night. Her laughter was loud and genuine as she and Edward toasted and told their stories about the man we were there to honor, and we rapidly lost count of the number of vodka bottles we'd emptied.

I was surrounded by colleagues, and friends, and slightly strange, sweaty people I didn't actually know. I was more than a little drunk, and I could no longer feel my feet, and there were two pretty large runs in my pantyhose—probably more than two, but definitely two that I was aware of. Edward made it his mission to spin my head off of my neck by constantly either rubbing up against me, or holding me just so, or whispering things in my ear that no mere mortal woman should ever have to hear unless she had the opportunity to get very naked in a hurry.

Wherever Oleg was, I hoped he was able to see us. I hoped he could see how loved he was, and how missed he was, and how those closest to him chose to celebrate the joy he'd brought them—not with tears and ceremony, but with vodka and loud music. And when Edward kissed me in the middle of all that mayhem, I silently promised Oleg that I would never waste a single minute of the time I was privileged to be alive and with the brave, beautiful, laughing man in front of me.

# # #

A/N - It's been a pleasure to write this for you. Thank you so, so much to everyone who's taken the time to read, and to review, and to recommend the story to others. Thank you for your patience, and for your incredibly kind words, and for sticking with me. Thank you to Tracy, and Sar, and Spangly, Fiz, and Dina, for their eyes and their support.

I'm not leaving the fandom, per se. I'll be around, and will probably contribute the odd short story or one-shot here and there, but I'm going to devote the majority of my energy to writing the novel I originally came here to practice for. The stories I've written here will remain right where they are for the foreseeable future; I have no plans whatsoever to remove them. In the unlikely event that I should need to, I will give you plenty of advance warning.

If you're at all interested in the novel, you can get a sneak peek of it on my blog. I've posted the prologue there— http:/ /iwriteontime. blogspot . com/ (remove extra spaces). The link to the blog is also on my FF author page. I can't guarantee that the prologue will be left up indefinitely, as I intend to query out the story once it's complete. But it's there now, and I'd love it if you wandered over there to share your thoughts about it with me.

I'll see you on the playground. Have a terrific 2012!


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